On the night of his class reunion, Shen Du was asked in front of everyone, "Still delivering takeout?" He climbed onto his electric scooter and accepted one last order. The destination was Qingshi Alley in the old town.
Something sealed beneath that old street two thousand years ago had begun to leak out.
The ground collapsed and swallowed people. Seven acquaintances fell into an underground palace beneath the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. It wasn't a tomb, but the first of nine layers of seals. Legends came true, and rows of terracotta soldiers marched through the dark. This layer had only one rule: anyone without a copper coin mark would be called by name when the dark tide came, and then one person would silently vanish.
Shen Du had no mark. He didn't die.
The surviving descendants of the tomb-guarding alchemists immediately split into two camps over him. One wanted to seal him away again, and kill him if they couldn't. The other wanted to use him, because controlling him would mean holding the key to the way down.
If they wanted to make it back alive, they had to descend. With each layer he went down, he would have to unlock another lock. Unlock a layer, gain a portion of power, and release whatever that layer had been restraining.
Every person he saved pushed him one step closer to opening that lock.
