Before Grandpa breathed his last, he pressed a bronze lamp into his hand. "If the lamp is lit, you're a tomb keeper. If it goes out, you're one of the dead in the grave."
From that day on, the ninety-nine graves in the barren hills were his to manage.
Xu Changming had planned to guard the graves and coast through life. But on the first night he lit the lamp, the job took a strange turn. The souls across the mountain obeyed his commands, vengeful ghosts moved house overnight, underworld bailiffs took detours, and the Judge of the Underworld wrote four words in the Book of Life and Death: This man is untouchable.
The graves he guarded fell into three categories: the Xu family's, the ones he could afford to offend, and the ones he couldn't. Even the underworld bailiffs kept half a mile away from the two nameless graves on the western slope.
Then someone dug up his family's ancestral grave in the middle of the night, intending to steal the souls from all ninety-nine graves.
Xu Changming set the lamp by the grave mound and smiled. "The lamp's lit. Everybody up, time to work."
All ninety-nine graves lit up at once.
The souls across the mountain knelt before him, calling him their boss.
