The day Shen Xizhou left the army, he thought his biggest problem in life was being broke.
A bronze Taotie token, a stack of IOUs, and a cryptic final message: Go to Fuxian Lake.
At the ghost market, a man in gold-rimmed glasses stopped him, smiling politely. “Give me the item, and you can live.”
Shen Xizhou smiled back. “I’m Shen Xizhou, a proud unemployed veteran. I hate it when people are polite to me.”
Before long, three strange people joined him.
Gu Zhifei, a Peking University archaeology PhD who kept saying, “That’s not scientific.”
Yue Shan, a Shanxi miner, as silent as a stone, yet able to hear mechanisms moving inside the mountains.
Shuang Jiang, a woman in black, a cultural relic restorer and the last generation of the Luo family’s tomb guardians. She said, “Don’t forget me.”
From the sunken city beneath Fuxian Lake, to the Yunnan Insect Valley, and then to the Qinling Dragon Vein.
The mercenaries of Ghost Abacus were always on their heels, waiting for them to risk their lives clearing the mechanisms before swooping in with guns to steal the prize.
In King Xian’s tomb, Gu Zhifei was captured.
In a passage lined with flesh, Shen Xizhou used his blood to claim the relic, and a mark burned into his palm.
At the Dragon Vein’s Eye, the Nine Provinces Cauldron hung above a whirlpool. Shuang Jiang sacrificed herself, her black hair turning white; Yue Shan broke his bones to jam the guardian beast; Gu Zhifei lit the explosives, cutting off his own escape.
Ghost Abacus was dead.
But the Jiujue Group took Gu Zhifei away.
Three months later, the mark on Shen Xizhou’s palm began to burn.
Shuang Jiang sent a photograph pointing to Mount Buzhou in the northwest.
Eight cauldrons remained unfound.
One brother had yet to return.
They weren’t going to rob tombs.
They were going to bring back, one by one, the people who should never have been forgotten.
