Three years after his master passed away, Chen Jiu opened the coffin and collected the bones. Carrying a box of the master's remains, he walked four hundred li through the mountains.
On his first night in Yun'an County, his uncle-master found him a job: sit vigil all night in the Zhao family's funeral hall for fifty coins.
After the third watch, he smelled something sweet and fishy.
His master had told him: When the sweet stench rises, a corpse is about to change.
He lifted the coffin lid. A three-inch black nail was driven into the back of Old Master Zhao's neck. The cloud-and-thunder pattern on its head was identical to the one on the half-talisman his master had left behind.
Back in the woodshed, he opened the bone box and counted three times.
One of his master's bones was missing.
From that night on, Chen Jiu knew one thing: his master had not passed away. He had split his cultivation into seven bones and used them to seal seven places. And someone was gathering them up, one by one.
Chen Jiu had to get to them first.
One bone, one case, one life.
The first bone was in the hands of Sun Ghosthand of the Fushou Hall in Yun'an County.
