The furnace fire glows blue, the medicinal broth reeks,
In the vat, bone shards clatter at midnight.
Red paper charms are pasted to the mirror,
A wooden puppet with a broken leg learns to speak.
A beast in a cage, its claws like nails,
In a stone maze, ghost soldiers march.
Beneath the moon, something listens beside the stove;
In the stove ashes, there are eyes.
More than a century ago, the land was shattered and its people scattered. Invaders swept in, burning cities and seizing territory. Countless palaces and towers were reduced to scorched earth overnight.
Many arcane records and strange tales, ancient spiritual artifacts, and rare old books that had once been hidden deep within the palace were scattered among the people. Some were destroyed by the flames of war; others were seized by the invaders and carried overseas, lost forever.
The legacy of Chinese occult arts hung by a thread.
At this critical moment, several brave civilians stepped forward and set out west with packs on their backs. They escorted a chest of ancient occult books that had fallen into private hands, crossing battlefields and wastelands to reach the southwestern hinterlands, preserving a spark of the Chinese occult tradition.
At the same time, large numbers of Japanese onmyoji crossed the sea with the invading army, seeking to sever the land's spiritual veins and drain their energy to strengthen the invaders' weapons.
If the spiritual veins were severed, the land would fall forever silent.
Practitioners led by the former imperial court's Celestial Master from the Bureau of Celestial Secrets and the Eight Great Spiritual Cultivation Clans joined forces with several ancient great demons. They split up to guard the spiritual veins, beginning a battle without smoke or fire against the Japanese onmyoji.
This was a war for every living being on Chinese soil.
No one could stand apart from it.
[This story mainly covers the history behind the founding of the modern Paranormal Investigation Bureau. Old friends like Baize and Chongming will all appear.]
[The folk song at the beginning is about the Eight Great Spiritual Cultivation Clans.]
[An alternate-history Republican-era story. The author takes many liberties and only uses the general historical setting. None of the characters are based on real people.]
Theme: The fate of the world rests on every person's shoulders.
