The mountains of western Hunan are damp, oppressive, and heavy on the heart. Mist rises from the valley, winding around ancient firs and moss-covered rocks, filtering the daylight into a sickly gray-green. For generations, the village in the mountain hollow has carried on the ancient trade of guiding the dead. The old hands swing soul-summoning bells, leading the dead, strung together with straw ropes, along the night roads, through deserted villages and wild graves, across the blurred boundary between the living and the dead. That boundary has never been as fragile as it is now. No one knows that deep inside the karst caves in the uninhabited hills behind the village, an underground river connects to a rift leading to another world, its damp air laced with a fetid wind that does not belong here. Tian Jiaxu, a young man from the city, loses his footing and plunges into endless darkness. As he falls, his ears ring with a funeral song hummed by countless ghosts to the tune of an old mountain ballad.
