Gravekeeper's Notes

Tomb Keeper’s Handbook: China’s last guardian of imperial tombs. The guardian’s eerie tomb-keeping arts come from The Old Tomb Keeper’s Records, a book compiled over a thousand years by generations of tomb guardians. It contains a hundred methods, each one strange and terrifying. An ancestral tomb and an ancient mausoleum have been guarded side by side for a thousand years, yet remain untouched. Neither official nor private grave robbers have ever managed to plunder this ancient tomb. In a strange and singular manner, this family of tomb guardians, appointed by imperial decree, has protected the thousand-year-old mausoleum. Second Master, a tomb guardian, has always held fast to one belief. No matter what happened, he never gave up. And somehow, I became his successor and a tomb guardian. At first, I was simply curious. I wanted to uncover that secret, so I completed the initiation ritual. I thought I could choose whether to serve as a tomb guardian: if I wanted to, I would, and if I didn’t, I would run away. But things didn’t work out that way. Tomb guardians have their own rules and their own ways. I could not escape the fate of becoming a guardian of an ancient tomb. Besides the ancestral tomb, Second Master and I also guard another mausoleum: the tomb of Nurhaci’s first wife.