Ember Seedling

For forensic pathologist Lin Yan, two bonds are impossible to let go of: the mung bean sprout he has raised for eight years, which kept him company through his darkest days, and “Sixty,” the old cat his grandfather left him, who has lived for sixty years. A strange fire breaks out in an old apartment building. The corridors loop endlessly, doppelgangers refuse to rest, and a sweet scent mingled with the grudges of the Republican era swirls through the smoke, dragging him into an obsession that has endured for more than seventy years.

This old Republican-era mansion hides deadly secrets: the charred bones of its caretaker, the immortal mother sprout, parasites that feed on obsession, and the unfulfilled wish his grandfather carried to the end of his life. The car accident eight years ago was no accident. Sixty's extraordinary longevity conceals a mystery, and Lin Yan himself is a vessel chosen to become the building's next guardian.

Obsession coils around him like a poisonous vine, while a replacement closes in at every turn. Lin Yan wields the unshakable logic of a forensic pathologist, drawing on the mung bean sprout's power of symbiosis and Sixty's blood, which wards off spirits, to rip open the truth amid a perilous world where reality and illusion intertwine. A wealthy woman from the Republican era obsessed with immortality, his grandfather's secret guardianship, and the deliberate machinations behind the car accident are all tied to the mother sprout's core beneath the foundations.

In the ultimate clash between protection and possession, obsessions spanning time become entangled. When the method to break the curse by uniting all three is set in motion, emerald stems pierce the black and uncanny darkness. Can he break the strange seventy-year-old shackles and let the mung bean sprout stay green and the old cat live out its remaining years in peace? This battle of reason and horror delivers one thrilling twist after another, growing more chilling the more you think about it, before revealing the warmth and strength of humanity in the desperate fight to protect what matters.