Awakening in the Mortal World

At two in the morning, in a shady clinic on the outskirts of town, Lin Yue wakes up on the operating table. His right kidney is gone, rough stitches run across his waist, and there’s a forged contract in his pocket. He reports the crime, but the records show no such person. The day the case is buried, he knows he’ll have to settle the score himself. He used to be a track athlete who could have made the provincial team in the 100-meter dash. With a kidney gone, he can no longer run, but now he can “see” qi: golden-red and searing hot, surging from his damaged qi sea. The qi tells him that beneath the Shen family, who took his kidney, lurks something that feeds on people’s vital essence; underground in the old city lies a faceless Buddha; and somewhere, someone shares his birthday, dreams the same dream, and bears the same brand on their palm. That person is Shen Ji. Yang soul and yin soul, born of the same source. Some want to reunite the twin souls and melt them down to make medicine. Others want to separate them and turn each into a weapon. A monk from Jingchen Temple stands amid the ruins north of the city and says, “In three days, I’ll come to cleanse this place.” Lin Yue twists his qi into a thin line and gives him one reply: “Then come.”