Antique Appraisal Notes: The Sand-Digging Scroll

Beauty is the bait, kin are the blade, and every desperate situation is a life-or-death lesson laid by those closest to me.

My name is Shisan. When I fell in love with a female streamer, my life became a living trap, carefully woven by the Eight Gates of the Thousand Doors.

The theft of the Warring States bronze bells, the fraud involving my grandfather's keepsakes, faking my death by jumping into a river and escaping: every step was part of the scheme. It wasn't until I dug open my grandfather's ceremonial tomb that I found an empty coffin and a blood-soaked scroll of sand-coffin scriptures.

Uncle Jiu Yi said, "Your grandfather didn't die. He 'returned to childhood.'"

To uncover the truth, I embarked on five deadly games:

Deep in the Tomb of the Thirteen Kings of Yin Ruins, I watched my grandfather, restored to youth, tear into a blood corpse. Inside a bronze square lantern, a writhing "immortal fetus" let out an infant's wail. It turned out my grandfather had faked his death twenty years ago so he could raise himself into a "living coffin" to suppress an evil being.

When the lantern's wick, the infant, pressed against my neck, I finally smiled. "Grandpa, you taught me that when choosing someone to lie in a coffin, you should pick the person closest to you."