Archives of China's Forbidden Zones: The Bizarre Secret of Immortality

[Revealing Secrets] [Immortality] [Antique Appraisal] [Tomb Exploration] [National Fortune] [Supernatural] [Feng Shui] [Rules Horror]

This is a suspenseful, exhilarating novel that blends urban high-level martial arts, ancient tomb adventures, and rules-based horror. The story begins when a bronze gu from the Shang and Zhou dynasties spontaneously catches fire in the middle of the night at a museum. While trying to save the artifact, Li Sichen, a young cultural relic restorer, unexpectedly awakens a supernatural ability in his left eye called "Dongxuan," which lets him glimpse the memories of death carried by ancient objects and the eerie energy of the earth's ley lines. As his investigation deepens, he discovers that he is a descendant of the Yuan and Li families, guardians of the "Yu Emperor's Measuring Ruler," and that beneath the museum lies a bronze altar connected to an ancient secret realm.

When corpse-refining practitioners from the Yinshan Sect, foreign archaeological looting groups, and the Daoist lineage of Longhu Mountain all get involved, Li Sichen is forced to form an expedition team with archaeologist Su Jinshu and mountain-moving Daoist Jiang Li. Together, they venture into the unopened sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui, a Miao frontier village of gu practitioners known as the Fallen Flower Cave, and a secret realm of Yingyu recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Gradually, they discover that every clue points to the "Collapse of the Heavenly Dao," an event erased from history: the "immortality" pursued by emperors throughout the ages is actually a cursed cycle of stealing the nation's fortune, while the last key to restarting the Heavenly Dao is precisely what the ancestors of the Yuan and Li families have been protecting.

The truth lies hidden among bronze inscriptions, forbidden corpse-puppet arts, and the fragmentary manuscript of A Study of the Strange Traces of Min Mountain. Meanwhile, the hunters lurking in the darkness have already aimed their guns at the space between his brows...