Huo Ying of the Nine Gates

Huo Ying

The seventeenth-generation head of the Huo family and the only female leader among the Old Nine Gates. Stunningly beautiful and formidable, she seems proud and aloof, but is actually meticulous and skilled in strange arts and ancient tomb feng shui. Cursed by her family, she has carried the secret of "immortality" since childhood. She never believed in fate, much less men, until she met Zhang Rishan.

Zhang Rishan

Zhang Qishan's most trusted adjutant, a formidable fighter who speaks little and is known as "Adjutant Zhang." On the surface, he is Zhang Qishan's shadow, but he carries the special bloodline of an outsider in the Zhang family, with a portion of the qilin blood sealed within him. He is silent, restrained, and absolutely loyal, but Huo Ying is the one unexpected thing in his life.

II. Story Synopsis

A Bloodstained Map

In the twenty-third year of the Republic of China, a series of tomb-robbing cases breaks out in Changsha. The victims' internal organs have all been removed, and they die in bizarre ways. Huo Ying receives an anonymous letter containing half of a bloodstained map to an ancient tomb, pointing to a Warring States-era tomb deep in the mountains of western Hunan. Meanwhile, Zhang Rishan is ordered to investigate the cases and discovers that the Huo family is involved as well. Forced to work together, the two go from testing each other to depending on one another for life and death.