The Secret Hoard of the River Chart

"The old man's corpse is bleeding from all seven orifices in the morgue, his intestines draped over the freezer, and I'm the only one who can see it." Qin Jiu slams a fist into the police station's glass. His yin-yang eyes burn so fiercely that his eyeballs nearly burst. The coroner's report says "suicide," but a blood-red specter circles above the corpse.

In front of a steamed bun shop late at night, the asphalt suddenly seeps crimson. The "Luoshui Map" his adoptive father couriered to him before dying twists into oracle-bone script in the moonlight: "On the twentieth day of the fifth month of the Wuyin year, Qin Qing will die." He jerks his head up. His sister's birthday flashes on his phone screen: only 72 hours remain.

"Brother, there's something under my bed eating my hair!" Qin Qing's scream over the international call mingles with a sticky, sloshing sound. A blood rabbit leaps from his backpack. Red light shines from its white eyes, revealing blue-black handprints crawling across the bathroom mirror of a villa. The rabbit, carved from ancient blood jade, suddenly speaks: "The Tomb of Fuxi is open. Eighty-one living corpses are on their way."

"The Qin family's bloodline is the final key." Deep in the archaeological institute's basement, Principal Li removes his gold-rimmed glasses. His pupils split into six petals. "The night your adoptive father unearthed the Luoshui Map, three thousand Yin soldiers trampled the institute's surveillance system. Now it's your turn."

Rain lashes the newly excavated Warring States altar. Qin Jiu grips a peachwood nail. The rabbit's blood-red shadow swells in the lightning, becoming a three-meter beast, while a golden Eight Trigrams array appears behind Qin Qing. "Brother, there's a line of tiny writing in the lining of Dad's notebook." She tears open the yellowed page. Oracle-bone script rises as bloody mist in the rain: "Kill your kin, and you may gain eternal life."

A deafening crash comes from underground as bronze chains snap. The first living corpse, dressed in a modern suit, bursts from the earth. A rotting finger wears the wedding ring Qin Jiu gave his adoptive father last year.