The Great Ming's Elixir Corpse Manual

During the Jiajing era, alchemists used the menstrual blood of virgins, cinnabar, lead and mercury, grave soil, and thunder-struck wood to refine the "Eternal Youth and Immortality Pill." Those who took it died without their bodies decaying, their souls locked within their seven apertures. Such beings were known as Pill Jiangshi.

In the seventeenth year of the Wanli era, Shen Moyan, a low-ranking clerk in the Jinan Prefecture's criminal court, inherits his father's job, as well as his father's feud.

He is glib, greedy, and afraid of dying. His greatest dream is to coast along until retirement. Then, during a grave relocation case, they open a coffin to find no body, only a pill and a blood-stained letter.

He obtains the Quanzhen sect's "Greatest Art for Suppressing Ghosts and Demons, the Northern Emperor's Method": the Tianpeng Incantation, along with an ancient Tianpeng ruler that devours the mind.

From then on, he handles autopsies and cases, subdues spirits and drives out demons, and even dares to compete with the old emperor for people's lives.

A cold and beautiful Daoist nun commands pill thunder, while a compassionate young monk guides the souls of the dead. A slippery clerk and two odd companions investigate from Shandong to the capital, from the Red Lead Tomb to the Wanli bones.

The emperor seeks immortality, feeding the pills with living people, nourishing them with corpses, then using the pills to sustain himself.

Shen Moyan plants the Tianpeng ruler on the ground and says:

"Your Majesty wants eternal life? Did you ask the ruler in my hand first?"