Tomb Raiders in Red
Synopsis
In the twenty-third year of the Republic, Changsha was shrouded in storm and gloom.
Er Yuehong, the second master of Changsha’s Old Nine Gates and a celebrated opera singer, sang a single Guifei Gets Drunk and seemed to capture an entire age of splendor. No one knew that he hid tomb-raiding skills up his sleeve. With hands capable of turning the tides, he could identify rare treasures from antiquity and plumb the depths of underworld palaces.
Luo Ying was the youngest daughter of the Luo family, an antique-dealing clan from Luoyang. Her ancestors had passed down the mysterious art of “hearing tombs to identify their sites.” But after a catastrophe wiped out her family, she fled to Changsha with half of the damaged Luo Family Geographical Classic. Hiding her identity, she took an inconspicuous job as a hairdresser’s assistant in an opera troupe.
An accident brought her to Er Yuehong’s attention. Though quiet and reserved, she had an astonishing instinct for antiques. He noticed the tremor in her fingers as they brushed a bronze vessel, and the flash of pain in her eyes when she looked at a tomb map. There was something unusual about her.
Luo Ying, too, gradually realized that the dashing master Er onstage was far from what he seemed. The cinnabar that sometimes stained his cuffs, the telltale traces of packed earth on his soles, and the eyes that could still make out objects in the dark all pointed to a world she had thought she would never touch again.
Fate drew them toward the same tomb: the tomb of a Warring States demon queen, deep in the mountains of western Hunan. Legend had it that the tomb held a complete copy of the Luo Family Geographical Classic, as well as a treasure capable of overturning the balance of power among the Old Nine Gates.
But the road ahead was fraught with danger. There were traps and poisonous miasma, not to mention the forces coveting the treasure. What unsettled Luo Ying even more was that the demon queen’s tomb was closely connected to the mystery behind her family’s destruction.
Together, they ventured deep into the underground palace. Their initial wariness gave way to trust in one another when death was close at hand. In the dark passage, Er Yuehong took her cold hand. “Miss Luo, stay close to me.”
And in the moment Luo Ying used her ancestral art to open the last stone gate, with death at their heels, she finally understood: the fate she had spent half her life running from had brought her right to this man’s side.
In a chaotic age, some sought wealth and others power. They sought only the truth, and each other.
“You’re the only one in this world who can recognize my footsteps.”
“You’re the only one who can unlock this tomb.”
Theme: Adventure
