In the seventeenth year of the Jingyuan era, in Ninghai City. The Wangjiang River runs through the city and into the sea, and long gowns and suits share the same streets. Deep within the mass graveyard west of the city lies an unmarked burial mound called the Tomb of Ten Thousand Bones.
Ye Zhibai is eighteen and an apprentice at the Yishun Funeral Parlor in Taiping Ward, carrying coffins, collecting corpses, and arranging funerals. Those who die violent deaths sometimes cannot swallow their final breath, leaving behind something unfinished. In the trade, it is called a "burden." He can see what the dead saw in their final moments. This is his inborn gift, and a secret he dares not reveal.
When he settles the dead's unfinished business, their burdens disperse, and they leave something behind: a martial technique, a secret, or a favor. The more he collects, the more unsettled he becomes. His mind wanders when he trains, so he can only keep himself in check through work, stance practice, and keeping vigil over the dead.
Not one funeral in Ninghai City is clean. One suspicious death follows another. The fires of years past, the silent officials, the deals conducted in the shadows, all point toward the tomb west of the city. The funerals he must arrange are not the only unfinished business he has to deal with. There is also what his parents left unfinished...
