Synopsis
Forensic pathologist Jiang Cheng'an has trusted nothing but autopsy reports all his life. That is, until a body supposedly "drowned in bed" is wheeled into the autopsy room. The victim's lungs are filled with river water, and an old-fashioned piece of hemp rope is caught between their fingers. Jiang has seen that kind of rope only in the old Jiang family home.
After twenty-one years away, someone suddenly reports strange noises inside the old house. He opens the door to find a trail of wet footprints leading from the entrance to his grandfather's bedroom. They are small, like the footprints of a seven- or eight-year-old child.
He has not entered that house since he was eight. And every year since she turned fifteen, his younger sister Jiang Yu'an has painted a picture of the basement in a house she has never visited. There is a crack in the wall, and something is breathing behind it.
He thought that if he stayed away from those things, he could keep his sister out of harm's way.
But he was wrong. Those things have not been unable to find him. They have been waiting for him to come back, take up the bronze seal, succeed his grandfather, and become the last of the Jiang family's night watchmen.
"If science can't explain it, I'll explain it with a knife. If a knife can't explain it either, then I'll use my life."
