Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• In a rainy Tianjin alley, young shroud-shop owner Li Xiang carefully stitches and restores a brutally beheaded corpse, earning Embalmer experience from his mysterious Book of a Hundred Trades.
• The book tracks his trades and abilities. His Embalmer skill reaches level 10 during the work, unlocking a new ability, though he postpones checking it.
• Third Master Huang of the Yellow Dog Gang arrives with an urgent job, accompanied by armed men from the feared Black Tiger Army. Their leader is a scarred officer with a twitching, surgically grafted beast claw.
• The officer demands that Li Xiang attend to a dead body and orders his men to carry it inside.

Character developments

• Li Xiang is disciplined, skilled, and outwardly deferential, but his calm handling of a grisly corpse and quiet grip on a hidden knife suggest experience and caution. His profession-based abilities offer a way to survive in a dangerous world.
• Third Master Huang presents himself as loyal to Li Xiang’s absent grandfather, but his rough manner and the dangerous company he brings make his motives uncertain.
• The Black Tiger officer is intimidating and violent, embodying the brutal consequences of demonic professional techniques.

Character interactions

• Li Xiang treats the corpse with care, reflecting his belief that honoring the dead can prevent them from becoming dangerous.
• Huang introduces the job as a favor and business opportunity; Li Xiang recognizes that it may be perilous.
• The officer ignores pleasantries, damages the shop counter with his beast claw, and asserts control over Li Xiang.

Significant themes

• Respect for the dead: Proper burial and restoration are both ethical duties and practical protection against restless corpses.
• Work as power: In this world, mastering a trade can grant supernatural abilities, but it demands dedication and adherence to professional rules.
• Survival amid chaos: Warlord violence, occult practices, and Li Xiang’s uncertain circumstances make ordinary work dangerous.
• Appearance and concealment: Li Xiang’s meek act hides his vigilance, while the officer’s grafted limb signals the monstrous price of power.

Plot points and events

• An armed escort brings Li Xiang a blood-seeping black coffin containing the dead bride of a Tianjin marshal. Its lid is rattling, and Li Xiang recognizes the corpse as a dangerous, resentful monster.
• Li Xiang demands thirty Silver Dollars to handle it safely. The soldiers threaten him at gunpoint, but the corpse breaks free before they can force him to comply.
• The corpse attacks the escort leader, Wang Shuo, and shrugs off two bullets. Li Xiang intervenes with his newly unlocked Soul-Summoning Hand, suppressing the corpse’s restless soul and forcing it back into a dormant state.
• After Li Xiang demonstrates that he can also briefly restrain the coffin with his Corpse Sense, Wang Shuo treats him with respect and negotiates. Li Xiang warns that the corpse will escape again around midnight unless sealed with a Soul-Sealing Nail.
• Wang Shuo pays ten Silver Dollars upfront and promises the remaining twenty after the bride is safely settled. Li Xiang prepares to deal with the coffin for the night.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang shifts from appearing frightened and outnumbered to calmly demonstrating his professional abilities. He stands up to armed men, then uses his expertise—and the threat of a disaster at the marshal’s funeral—to secure payment.
• Wang Shuo begins as a bullying officer who believes his gun gives him authority. After the corpse nearly kills him and Li Xiang saves him, he becomes cautious, respectful, and willing to negotiate.
• Third Master Huang, who initially mocks Li Xiang for demanding a high fee, is terrified when the corpse rises. His confidence collapses along with the soldiers’.
• Li Xiang and Wang Shuo’s exchange changes from coercion to reluctant cooperation: Li Xiang stresses the danger and his price, while Wang Shuo recognizes that he needs a specialist.

Significant themes

• Professional skill versus brute force: Guns and threats are useless against the supernatural; Li Xiang’s specialized abilities succeed where conventional power fails.
• Respect and leverage: Li Xiang earns respect through demonstrated competence and turns the soldiers’ desperation into fair payment.
• Greed, duty, and survival: The escort’s mission is driven by the marshal’s funeral plans, but Wang Shuo’s immediate concern is avoiding failure—and the dire consequences for himself and his family.
• The dangerous boundary between death and unrest: The corpse’s resentment and approaching midnight deadline make improper treatment of the dead a threat to the living.

Chapter Summary: “Seal the Coffin!”

Key plot points and events

• Rather than immediately sealing the coffin, Li Xiang places a green-flamed ever-burning lamp beside it to draw away the dead woman’s resentment and lights Soul-Locking Incense to guide her spirit toward the Yellow Springs.
• He tries to nail the coffin shut, but the corpse’s unusually rigid bones push against the lid. Learning that the dead woman had been strengthened by the Marshal’s special meat pills, Li Xiang explains that he must loosen her body first.
• Using his Embalmer’s skill and precise Corpse Sense, Li Xiang dislocates the corpse’s joints, dispersing the energy trapped in her body. As he reaches her throat, however, Calamity Qi begins to erupt.
• Li Xiang pins the corpse and extracts a strange, writhing metal-like object from her throat, catching it in a copper basin and covering it with a talisman. He warns the others not to touch it, calling it a poisonous “Throat Baleful Entity.”
• With the dangerous breath expelled, Li Xiang drives seven nails into the coffin lid in the pattern of the Big Dipper. The corpse settles, the rain stops, and the coffin is finally sealed.
• Wang Shuo pays Li Xiang and agrees to keep the night’s events quiet. After the soldiers leave, Li Xiang discovers that the object is a living-looking Golden Cicada made of flesh and metal. It suddenly shrieks and flies into his mouth.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang demonstrates confidence, technical expertise, and nerve, calmly managing increasingly dangerous supernatural events. He also uses bluff and theatrical explanations—such as presenting ordinary blood-soaked nails as “Soul-Sealing Nails”—to control the room. Despite his composure, the ordeal leaves him exhausted.
• Wang Shuo, initially tense and ready to use force, recognizes Li Xiang’s skill and becomes more trusting. He helps direct the soldiers, respects Li Xiang’s warnings, pays him, and offers to apologize for his earlier behavior.
• Third Master Huang and the soldiers remain frightened and defer to Li Xiang’s instructions. Huang keeps his distance and leaves with the group once the coffin is safe.
• Li Xiang and Wang Shuo develop a pragmatic understanding: Wang provides information about the corpse’s treatment, while Li Xiang handles the danger. They also quietly agree to conceal what happened.

Significant themes

• Skill and composure in the face of danger: Li Xiang’s professional knowledge—not weapons or brute force—makes the crisis manageable.
• Appearance versus reality: Li Xiang’s ritual tools are partly improvised or ordinary objects, yet his performance and practical skill make them effective.
• The cost of hidden power: The corpse’s unnatural strength and the Calamity Qi reveal that the danger is more complicated than a simple haunting.
• Risk and reward: Li Xiang earns money and professional experience, but his curiosity about the Golden Cicada immediately exposes him to a new threat.

Key plot points and events

• The Golden Cicada Li Xiang removed from a corpse crawls down his throat. After a brief burning sensation, it settles in his abdomen, leaving him unharmed but intensely hungry.
• Li Xiang cooks a simple bowl of noodles. The cooking experience raises him to Level 5 and unlocks Hundred-Flavor Tongue, which lets him judge ingredients, freshness, and cooking heat with unusual precision.
• The Book of a Hundred Trades reveals five advanced Embalmer routes: Gravekeeper, Paper Effigy Maker, Underworld Matchmaker, Corpse Poisoner, and Feng Shui Master. Li Xiang considers their requirements and dangers, then chooses Fortune Teller as a practical path toward becoming a Feng Shui Master. He also plans to learn painting as a useful additional prerequisite.
• As Li Xiang sleeps, the Golden Cicada becomes active. Fine golden threads emerge from his skin and weave around him, forming a glowing chrysalis resembling a Gold-Thread Jade Suit. The transformation suggests he is undergoing a mysterious metamorphosis.
• The next morning, Shao Shan arrives to collect his father’s body. Li Xiang has stitched it neatly and accepts only half the agreed payment, returning the rest for funeral expenses.
• Shao Shan rejects his uncle’s plea to return home safely. Determined to continue his dead father’s revolutionary cause, he sets off south to support the Great Xin Dynasty, declaring that his death might inspire many others.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang remains pragmatic in the face of the supernatural: he accepts that the cicada is inside him, eats to satisfy his hunger, and considers how to build his professions strategically. His fair treatment of Shao Shan also shows compassion beneath his dry humor.
• Shao Shan is grieving but resolute. His father’s death strengthens rather than deters his commitment to political change.
• The old porter, Shao Shan’s uncle, urges him to avoid danger and live peacefully, but Shao Shan refuses. Li Xiang watches their exchange with wry respect, recognizing the intensity of the younger generation.
• Li Xiang’s quiet assistance to Shao Shan contrasts with the boy’s fiery defiance, but both respond to death with a sense of responsibility—Li Xiang through care for the dead, Shao Shan through action among the living.

Significant themes

• Death, transformation, and immortality: The Golden Cicada’s chrysalis-like transformation contrasts with ancient emperors’ failed attempts to preserve themselves through burial suits.
• Choice and risk: Each profession offers power at a cost, while Shao Shan knowingly chooses a dangerous political path.
• Different ideas of courage and purpose: Some seek to escape death; others accept it for a cause. The chapter leaves open whether one is nobler.
• Compassion amid hardship: Li Xiang’s reduced fee gives Shao Shan’s family practical help at a moment of grief.

Plot points and events

• Li Xiang sets out to unlock the Fortune Teller profession, setting up a divination stall at East Wharf with his grandfather’s Book of Changes.
• Though he is inexperienced and mocked by passersby, he keeps practicing. By day’s end, his efforts unlock Fortune Teller Lv1 and then raise it to Lv2. The profession grants Reading People, allowing him to notice expressions, body language, and details others miss.
• The chapter explains the danger of professions: they grant supernatural authority but can consume people who surrender to their obsessions. Li Xiang recalls a merchant who became a gold-eating monster, and also hopes to meet former-dynasty martial artist Hong Tianbao in Linjiang County.
• Back at his shop, Li Xiang finds a threatening letter from Wang Shuo, weighted with a warm cartridge casing. Wang says he killed Huang San and warns Li Xiang to direct the Yellow Dog Gang to him if they ask questions. Li Xiang burns the letter and hides the casing.
• Laborers bring in Gangzi, Li Xiang’s childhood friend, killed by the Yellow Dog Gang’s dogs after protesting the gang’s takeover of the dockworkers’ unloading area. Li Xiang begins painstakingly repairing Gangzi’s mutilated body so he can be laid to rest peacefully.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang is patient and resilient: he accepts ridicule while learning fortune-telling, and uses his new observational skill to check his shop for intruders before approaching the letter. His calm response to the threat gives way to quiet anger at the gang’s brutality.
• Gangzi, previously a familiar dockworker who joked with Li Xiang at the stall, becomes a victim of the gang’s violence. His death gives the day’s casual fortune-telling encounter a grim, personal aftermath.
• Old Zhang, who once showed kindness to Li Xiang as a child, arrives grief-stricken and blames himself for bringing Gangzi to the wharf.
• Wang Shuo’s letter mixes apparent assistance with intimidation, revealing the dangerous power dynamics surrounding Li Xiang.
• Li Xiang tells the mourners to wait outside, then honors Gangzi by carefully restoring his appearance.

Significant themes

• Power and its cost: Professions offer extraordinary abilities but risk turning their users into monsters.
• Exploitation and violence: The Yellow Dog Gang treats workers and shopkeepers as property, illustrating a world where human lives are valued cheaply.
• Resilience and compassion: Li Xiang persists through mockery and responds to Gangzi’s death with skilled, respectful care.
• Appearance, observation, and truth: Fortune-telling begins as a performance, but Li Xiang’s new ability to read people may prove useful in a world full of threats and hidden motives.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• After Gangzi’s burial preparations, Old Zhang and the dockworkers offer Li Xiang a small collection of coins and silver for his work. Li Xiang accepts only half his fee, leaving the rest as money for Gangzi’s journey to the afterlife, where the violently killed man may face hardship.
• The next morning, Li Xiang sets up as a fortune teller at West Wharf. He uses observation and broad predictions to advise passersby, earning several coins and drawing a small crowd.
• After completing enough readings, he reaches Fortune Teller level 5 and unlocks Ironclad Divination. The ability lets him see a person’s fortune for the next twelve two-hour periods as a colored aura, but he can use it only three times daily and must not make overly definite predictions.
• He tests the ability on a quarrelsome woman and sees a gray aura. Moments later, she slips on a rotten watermelon rind and falls, confirming that the power works.
• As Li Xiang prepares to leave, two Maoshan Daoists arrive at the wharf. One explains that their mission is to sell a Female Jiangshi to the Warlord’s men for ten gold bars. His younger companion questions whether this violates the balance between yin and yang, while also suggesting that selling supernatural creatures is easier and more profitable than hunting them.

Character developments

• Li Xiang shows both professional discipline and compassion: he insists on being paid what he is owed, but refuses to take money that the poor dockworkers need for Gangzi’s afterlife. He also proves himself a clever, pragmatic fortune teller, then gains a potentially powerful supernatural skill.
• Old Zhang and the dockworkers express deep grief and gratitude for Li Xiang’s care of Gangzi, emphasizing their loyalty to one another despite their poverty.
• The younger Daoist comes across as irreverent and profit-minded, openly questioning his order’s mission and rules. His senior brother remains calm and reserved.

Significant themes

• Compassion balanced with duty: Li Xiang follows the rules of his trade without exploiting people in desperate circumstances.
• Practical skill versus supernatural power: His early readings rely on keen observation and vague advice, but his new ability gives genuine access to the supernatural.
• Morality and profit: The Daoists’ plan to sell a Jiangshi raises questions about whether commercial gain should override the proper order between the living and the dead.
• Life amid hardship: Even after a violent death and a night without sleep, work continues, and people seek small ways to get by.

Character interactions

• Li Xiang and Old Zhang share a tender, respectful exchange over Gangzi’s body and the money collected for the funeral.
• At West Wharf, Li Xiang engages with a series of customers, adapting his predictions to each person and earning their trust.
• The two Daoists discuss their mission as they approach the wharf: the younger one voices doubts and greed, while the older one is introduced as his steady senior brother.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points

• Two young Daoists, Lin Xuanshu and his junior brother Lin Xuanguang, approach Li Xiang’s fortune-telling stall and ask him to read their fortunes.
• Li uses his Ironclad Divination again. The effort causes him severe pain, but he sees alarming signs: black energy and a murderous omen over Lin Xuanshu, and a Peach Blossom Tribulation over Lin Xuanguang.
• Li warns that Lin Xuanshu will face disaster within three double-hours and that Lin Xuanguang may die if he lets a woman’s charms cloud his judgment.
• Lin Xuanguang angrily dismisses the reading and nearly attacks Li’s stall. Lin Xuanshu stops him, recognizes that Li has genuine supernatural ability, and apologizes.
• After introductions, Lin Xuanshu asks Li about the strange atmosphere around Blackwater Ancient Town. Li tells them of Blackwater Pool, a foul, ink-black pool north of town whose water never changes level.
• Lin Xuanguang suspects the pool may be a Corpse-Nurturing Ground, possibly concealing a powerful Zombie King. Their discussion is interrupted by a sharp bark.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang demonstrates that his divination can reveal serious supernatural dangers, though using it exacts a painful physical cost. He remains composed and modest even when the Daoists initially doubt him.
• Lin Xuanshu proves perceptive and courteous: he recognizes Li’s Karmic Power, restrains his junior, apologizes, and treats Li as a fellow practitioner.
• Lin Xuanguang is proud and quick-tempered, rejecting the warnings as an insult to his abilities. Despite his skepticism, he listens closely to Li’s information about the pool.
• The encounter shifts from a public challenge to a respectful exchange between practitioners, with Li providing local knowledge and the Daoists considering its implications.

Significant themes

• Fate and danger: Li’s readings suggest that both Daoists are approaching serious, distinct calamities.
• Hidden ability and recognition: A seemingly ordinary stallholder proves to possess real skill, while Lin Xuanshu can discern that skill beneath appearances.
• Pride versus caution: Lin Xuanguang’s arrogance contrasts with Lin Xuanshu’s restraint and Li’s measured warnings.
• The supernatural beneath ordinary life: Blackwater Pool hints that the town’s unsettling nighttime atmosphere may have a dangerous supernatural cause.

Plot points and events

• Huang Shendu, a swaggering young heir of the Yellow Dog Gang, bullies Li Xiang at his dockside stall. His huge dog threatens the bystanders, so Lin Xuanguang secretly uses a Daoist technique to make Huang collapse; the startled dog then bites him.
• Li Xiang is impressed by the power of Daoist Arts and longs to learn them, though he realizes access may depend on joining a sect. Lin Xuanshu apologizes and leaves him a protective talisman before he and Xuanguang head for Blackwater Pool.
• That night, the two disciples confront a terrible creature rising from the pool: Corpse Demon Taisui, a mass of resentment and rotting remains—not the jiangshi they expected. It overwhelms them until their master, Lin Shouzhen, arrives and blasts it back into the pool.
• Lin Shouzhen then reveals the disciples’ grave mistake: they were supposed to retrieve a female jiangshi, but dug up and sold Maoshan’s founding master instead. The coffin is being transported toward Tianjin, potentially for foreign researchers to dissect. Furious, Lin Shouzhen threatens to punish them if their founder is harmed.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang becomes more eager to pursue Daoist Arts after witnessing Xuanguang’s spell, but remains cautious and plans to return home and prepare for his journey to Linjiang County.
• Lin Xuanguang acts impulsively against Huang Shendu, justifying the spell as necessary to steady his Dao Heart. At Blackwater Pool, he is badly shaken by the demon and by learning he accidentally sold his sect’s founder.
• Lin Xuanshu shows greater restraint than his junior, chastising him for acting in anger. He is gravely injured by Taisui and horrified by the revelation about the coffin.
• Lin Shouzhen demonstrates overwhelming power by driving off Taisui, then shifts from rescuer to furious master when he learns what his disciples have done.
• Huang Shendu is publicly humiliated, while the surrounding dockworkers and vendors silently enjoy seeing the bully brought down.

Significant themes

• Power, discipline, and responsibility: Daoist abilities can be used casually or recklessly, and spiritual discipline carries moral consequences.
• Knowledge and aspiration: Li Xiang’s encounter deepens his desire to learn Daoist Arts, while also highlighting that access depends on lineage and opportunity.
• Mistaken identity and unintended consequences: The disciples’ confusion over the graves turns a routine mission into a potential disaster for their sect.
• Hidden danger beneath appearances: The expected jiangshi proves to be something far more monstrous, and the coffin they thought ordinary contains their revered founder.

Key plot points and events

• Li Xiang leaves Blackwater Ancient Town in disguise, closing his shop and heading to Linjiang County to learn martial arts and strengthen himself.
• At West Wharf, he discovers that Huang San’s drowned, mutilated body has been recovered. Huang San was killed after an earlier confrontation at Li’s shop.
• Second Master Huang arrives with gang members and an enormous, blood-eyed dog called Old Two. He identifies the body as his brother’s through the dog’s unusual, tearful recognition.
• Old Two then tears flesh from the corpse and eats it. Second Master Huang claims the act gives his brother’s soul somewhere to go, then threatens anyone responsible for the killing.
• Li recognizes that the Yellow Dog Gang’s dog-related Profession is sinister and possibly unorthodox. He leaves for the ticket checkpoint, unsettled by the brutality he has witnessed.

Character developments

• Li Xiang acts cautiously, keeping his identity concealed as he begins his journey toward martial training. His observations suggest growing awareness of the dangerous Professions and power structures around him.
• Second Master Huang is revealed as controlled and menacing, yet openly affectionate toward Old Two. His grief—or appearance of grief—quickly gives way to a public threat of vengeance.
• Old Two is shown as both a trained tracker and a terrifying, human-eating creature. Its tears suggest an uncanny bond with the Yellow Dog Gang’s dead member.

Significant themes

• The world’s brutality and dehumanization: people may be treated—and die—worse than animals.
• The unsettling fusion of affection and violence, especially in Second Master Huang’s tenderness toward a dog that devours a corpse.
• The dangers of strange Professions and the gang’s use of power to intimidate ordinary people.
• Survival through caution and preparation, reflected in Li’s disguise and decision to seek martial strength.

Character interactions

• Li observes the crowd and the corpse retrievers while avoiding attention.
• Second Master Huang questions the corpse retrievers, then directs Old Two to identify the body.
• Old Two’s recognition prompts Second Master Huang to acknowledge the dead man as his brother; afterward, he comforts and feeds the dog while threatening the crowd.
• The crowd responds with fear and silence, while Li watches from its edge before continuing his journey.

Plot and events

• Li Xiang boards the Blackwater, a crowded paddle steamer bound for Linjiang County. The ship’s mix of foreign machinery and traditional talismans reflects the strange blend of old and new in the Great Xin Dynasty.
• He settles into second class, notices the stark divide between passengers’ circumstances, then heads to the dining room to satisfy the Golden Cicada’s persistent hunger.
• The captain warns passengers that the river is dangerous: they must stay away from the rail and, after dark, never open their cabin doors or leave—even if they hear familiar voices or cries for help.
• Li Xiang watches the mist-shrouded river and wonders what creatures inhabit it.
• Nearby, young, foreign-educated reformers denounce the dynasty, tradition, and Daoist institutions, declaring their aim to study abroad and build a scientific new society.
• A battered young Daoist, Lin Xuanguang—whom Li Xiang saw briefly at the docks—challenges them to improve their country and educate its people rather than simply condemn them.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang remains observant and wry. His hunger provides comic relief, while his reflections show caution about both the river’s supernatural dangers and the reformers’ certainty.
• The student reformers are introduced as passionate idealists, convinced that science and revolution can rescue the nation. Their confidence is sincere, though Li Xiang sees it as potentially naive.
• Lin Xuanguang appears as a skeptical countervoice. His damaged appearance hints at hardship, while his reply urges practical responsibility over denunciation. His exchange with the students begins a clash between reformist and traditionalist perspectives.

Significant themes

• Tradition versus modernity: Foreign technology shares space with talismans, while students argue for science and against old customs.
• Idealism versus practical action: Lin urges the students to build and teach rather than merely reject.
• Inequality and social change: The sharp differences between ship classes mirror the era’s broader social divisions.
• Danger and uncertainty: The captain’s rules and the obscured river establish a world where supernatural threats are real and ordinary precautions matter.

Plot points and events

• In the dining hall, Lin Xuanguang condemns young reformers for criticizing China while avoiding direct action. His fiery speech wins the passengers’ approval, while the reformers accuse him of being ignorant and backward.
• Li Xiang quietly uses Ironclad Divination. The reformers’ fortunes look weak but show a small, growing sign of hope; Lin Xuanguang remains marked by heroic fortune, but a dark, familiar trace from Blackwater Ancient Town clings to his still-dense romantic calamity.
• Li Xiang concludes that Lin Xuanguang’s troubles are continuing and that he may soon suffer because of a woman. He leaves the argument, realizing that Daoist experts—including Lin Xuanguang and his senior brother—are aboard to face possible supernatural dangers.
• Returning to his second-class cabin, Li Xiang finds the wounded Lin Xuanshu on a bunk, tended by an imposing middle-aged Daoist. Lin Xuanshu recognizes Li Xiang and tries to rise, but his injuries make him cough and grimace.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Xuanguang appears bold and passionate, openly challenging the reformers, but divination reveals that his promising fate remains entangled with unresolved danger.
• The reformers are portrayed as idealistic but combative. Though they dismiss Lin Xuanguang, their fortunes suggest they may yet contribute meaningfully if they survive and return.
• Li Xiang remains observant and cautious. His divination gives him insight but causes a painful mental strain; he avoids the public quarrel and is unsettled to discover Lin Xuanshu in his cabin.
• Lin Xuanshu is gravely injured but recognizes Li Xiang. The middle-aged Daoist caring for him displays guarded, formidable authority and immediately restrains him from worsening his wounds.

Significant themes

• The chapter contrasts words with action and traditional Daoist conviction with reformist ideas. Neither side persuades the other, while the crowd responds to the appeal of practical courage.
• Hope and danger coexist: the reformers may become agents of change, but Lin Xuanguang’s heroic promise is shadowed by old supernatural troubles and a new looming calamity.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Xuanshu tells Li Xiang that Li’s warning about danger at Blackwater Pool helped him and his fellow disciple survive a deadly encounter. He introduces Li to his master, Lin Shouzhen, a renowned Maoshan ghost-catching master.
• A merchant, Qian Dacai, recognizes and eagerly tries to flatter Lin Shouzhen, who coolly refuses his foreign cigarettes.
• Lin Xuanguang returns from an argument with passengers about science and democracy, boasting about his rebuttals. He is surprised to find Li aboard the same ship.
• Li explains that he is traveling to Linjiang County to find a martial arts school for self-defense. Lin Xuanshu cautions that, at twenty, Li has started too late and that schools usually withhold genuine techniques.
• Lin Xuanguang proposes that Lin Shouzhen assess Li’s bone structure. During the examination, Shouzhen finds Li has unusually resilient tendons and a promising constitution, though his late start limits his prospects. Li remains determined to try.
• When Li asks whether the Maoshan group is going to Linjiang to catch ghosts, the disciples act evasive, concealing their embarrassing real mission.
• That night, Li wakes to tapping at the porthole. He sees a face covered in fine scales staring in at him from the dark river.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang remains resourceful and guarded, presenting martial arts as a practical need while privately relying on the Book of a Hundred Trades to develop skills. He is intrigued by Shouzhen’s assessment but stays committed to pursuing martial arts.
• Lin Shouzhen appears stern, disciplined, and authoritative. He gives Li an honest assessment and offers his expertise, while quietly disapproving of Xuanguang’s loose talk.
• Lin Xuanshu is grateful to Li but realistic about the barriers to martial training. He treats Li candidly and tries to steer him away from false expectations.
• Lin Xuanguang is impulsive and boastful, but also eager to help Li by arranging the bone-reading.
• Qian Dacai shamelessly courts favor with Shouzhen, whose refusal establishes his austere manner.

Significant themes

• Destiny versus effort: Li’s promising natural constitution is offset by the disadvantage of beginning late, yet he refuses to give up.
• Knowledge and access: Genuine martial arts instruction is guarded by lineage and privilege, while Li’s unusual system may offer a way around those barriers.
• Appearances and secrets: The Maoshan disciples hide the true purpose of their journey, and the chapter’s final apparition turns a routine river voyage into a supernatural threat.
• Rationality versus tradition: Xuanguang’s quarrel with passengers over modern ideas reflects wider cultural tensions, while the ghostly face suggests forces beyond ordinary explanation.

Key plot points and events

• A grotesque River-Patrolling Yaksha appears outside the ship’s porthole and asks Li Xiang whether he has a “demon braid.” Lin Shouzhen protects Li Xiang from its gaze and uses a blood-drawn Maoshan talisman to negotiate safe passage.
• Lin Shouzhen explains that the Yaksha is an official of the Demon Dynasty’s old order, accompanying the Blackwater River Dragon King’s wedding procession. Because Li Xiang saw and answered the Yaksha’s attention, he formed a dangerous bond of cause and effect.
• The group discusses the Demon Braid Edict: the Former Dynasty forced people to shave their heads and wear a thin queue that marked submission to mountain and river demons. Those without the braid were considered unprotected prey.
• Lin Xuanguang recounts how resistance to the edict led to the massacres of Guangling, Lianqi, and Jiyang, where more than a million people were devoured. Lin Shouzhen adds that the Great Xin Dynasty outlawed these practices but never fully erased the old treaties, and some present-day warlords still collude with monsters.
• The next morning, six reform-minded passengers—including the young man with gold-wire glasses—are found brutally killed after apparently opening their cabin door. In the lower-deck communal cabin, 136 people have also died, slaughtered by the river creatures that followed the Yaksha.
• Li Xiang decides to go below and help deal with the bodies, both out of professional duty as an Embalmer and to prevent the corpses from becoming dangerous. Lin Xuanguang volunteers to help, and Lin Shouzhen lets him go.

Character developments

• Li Xiang is shaken by the Yaksha and by the history of demon rule, but fear gives way to anger and resolve. He decides he must train in martial arts so he can defend himself and force others to heed reason.
• Lin Shouzhen demonstrates calm authority and deep knowledge of supernatural customs. He protects Li Xiang, explains the history behind the demon braid, and recognizes Li’s growing determination.
• Lin Xuanguang responds with open anger to the Demon Dynasty’s oppression and shows a willingness to help Li Xiang, despite being less committed to cultivation.
• Lin Xuanshu speaks reverently of Wu Taizu, but his repeated lament that another such hero is unlikely reveals his despair about the present.
• The dead reformers’ fate underscores the gap between their confidence in modern ideas and the lethal power of the old supernatural order.

Significant themes

• Historical oppression and lingering consequences: The Demon Dynasty’s treaties and practices remain potent long after its fall.
• Knowledge as both danger and necessity: Perceiving the supernatural can draw its attention, while deliberate historical forgetting leaves people vulnerable.
• Human dignity versus submission: The demon braid symbolizes a people’s coerced allegiance and treatment as livestock.
• Power and resistance: Li Xiang’s resolve to train reflects the belief that moral arguments alone cannot protect the powerless.
• Unequal suffering: Wealthier passengers receive better protection, while poor travelers bear the heaviest losses.

Character interactions

• Lin Shouzhen shields Li Xiang from the Yaksha, then uses his standing and talisman to secure passage.
• Li Xiang questions Lin Shouzhen and the younger Daoists about the demon braid, the massacres, and the hidden history of the realm.
• Lin Xuanguang voices outrage at the old regime and later joins Li Xiang in responding to the dead.
• Lin Shouzhen permits Xuanguang to accompany Li Xiang, understanding that helping with the bodies may suit him better than pursuing cultivation.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• Li Xiang and Lin Xuanguang go to the ship’s lowest deck, where a water ghost killed many passengers. The sailors try to stop them, but Li Xiang’s work as an Embalmer earns their respect.
• They find a horrific scene of bodies, blood, and scattered remains. Li Xiang calmly stitches and arranges the dead, while Lin Xuanguang helps despite his revulsion.
• Li Xiang tends all 136 bodies, restoring their appearance and dignity. The Book of a Hundred Trades rewards his work, raising his Embalmer skill to Level 10—but advancement requires a rare “Joyful Funeral”: preparing the body of an ordinary person over one hundred years old who died naturally. In the violent Great Xin Dynasty, this seems nearly impossible.
• The dead passengers’ families arrive and are moved by the care given to their loved ones. A boy argues that Li Xiang’s work restored dignity to a grandfather who had been denied it in life. Li Xiang accepts their thanks but asks them to clean the cabin.
• At lunch, Li Anqi blames Lin Xuanguang for the death of Zhiyuan, who opened a window despite warnings and was killed by a water ghost. Xu Zhou stops her and acknowledges that Zhiyuan made his own choice.
• Xu Zhou apologizes for Li Anqi’s accusation, but remains committed to studying supernatural creatures scientifically. He plans to dissect them after returning from his studies in the Eastern Seas, hoping to understand how they work and perhaps help save the dynasty.
• The ship reaches Linjiang County.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang shows composure and compassion in the face of mass death. His work reinforces his belief that the dead deserve dignity, even when the living are denied it. His newly unlocked advancement requirement leaves him frustrated and bleak about the world.
• Lin Xuanguang struggles with the gore but follows Li Xiang’s instructions and helps. He is angered by Li Anqi’s blame, though Xu Zhou’s calm response defuses the confrontation and earns some of his respect.
• Li Anqi channels her grief into accusing Lin Xuanguang, unwilling at first to accept that Zhiyuan ignored repeated warnings.
• Xu Zhou emerges as rational, determined, and intensely devoted to scientific inquiry. He neither condemns nor thanks Lin Xuanguang; instead, he treats Zhiyuan’s death as evidence that existing assumptions are inadequate.
• The families of the victims express profound gratitude, especially after the boy frames Li Xiang’s work as restoring dignity to people who had been dehumanized in life.
• Lin Shouzhen approves of Xu Zhou’s boldness, suggesting that some arrogance may be necessary to achieve anything in a desperate age.

Significant themes

• Dignity in death: Li Xiang’s embalming gives the victims and their families a measure of respect denied to many common people during life.
• The cost and limits of knowledge: Xu Zhou believes science may eventually explain supernatural threats, while the chapter shows how dangerous it is to test theories without understanding the risks.
• Grief and blame: Li Anqi’s accusation contrasts with Xu Zhou’s insistence that Zhiyuan made his own choice.
• A brutal world and impossible hopes: The difficulty of finding someone who died peacefully at an advanced age reflects the pervasive violence of the era—and makes Li Xiang’s path to advancement seem almost unattainable.

Key plot points and events

• At Linjiang County’s wharf, Li Xiang sees the Blackwater’s captain smiling as workers remove the bodies of dead steerage passengers. Using his perception, Li detects a thick blood aura surrounding the ship and a golden light gathering over the captain.
• Lin Shouzhen warns his disciples that some matters must not be spoken aloud. The Maoshan party then parts ways with Li Xiang. Lin Shouzhen privately judges Li’s potential as “capable” talent: promising in character, but held back by his late start and established foundations.
• Lin Xuanshu secretly warns Li not to travel on the Blackwater—or by water at all—again. The captain is a Ferryman attempting to advance from expert to grandmaster, using voyages of death and the deaths of passengers as ritual sacrifices. Xuanshu says 136 people died on the previous night’s voyage and fears the captain may cause an even greater disaster on the return trip. His ties to a naval admiral make him effectively protected.
• Li reflects on the cruel cost of Profession advancement: his own Embalmer path requires a Joyful Funeral, while the Ferryman’s ritual demands human sacrifice. He wonders what other Professions demand and concludes that a Profession may be a curse.
• A young rickshaw driver takes Li through Linjiang County and recommends the Shocking Heron Martial Hall. Its master, Hong Tianbao, was a Martial Laureate under the Former Dynasty and recently killed the Gold-Swallowing Beast with his bare hands. Impressed, Li chooses the hall and arrives there.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang grows more aware of the moral cost and danger built into the world’s Profession system. Despite his misgivings, he remains determined to pursue martial arts and unlock its associated Profession.
• Lin Xuanshu shows his concern for Li by risking a private warning, while his anger at the captain’s sacrifice ritual exposes the limits of his ability to oppose powerful elites.
• Lin Shouzhen appears measured and perceptive: he recognizes Li’s limitations but also his steadiness and quick wit, and understands that Xuanguang’s questions are meant to give Xuanshu time to speak with Li.
• Lin Xuanguang parts from Li warmly and hopes he will visit Maoshan, then helps create an opportunity for Xuanshu to deliver his warning.
• The rickshaw driver is friendly and knowledgeable, and his powerful, controlled running suggests he has entered the Rickshaw Driver Profession. His admiration for Hong Tianbao steers Li toward the martial hall.

Significant themes

• Power bought with lives: The captain’s advancement ritual turns ordinary passengers into expendable sacrifices.
• Corruption and inequality: Warlords value a potential grandmaster more than the lives of hundreds of common people, while law and justice hold little force.
• The cost of ambition: Profession advancement offers power and perhaps longevity, but its rituals may demand terrible sacrifices.
• Talent, effort, and fate: Li’s late start limits his assessed talent, yet his determination keeps him moving toward a new path.

Key plot points and events

• Li Xiang arrives at the Shocking Heron Martial Hall and is shown around by Qin Zhong, a rickshaw driver who turns out to be a direct disciple. Qin explains that he uses pulling his rickshaw to train his legs.
• Li Xiang sees the hall’s crowded training yard and learns how expensive martial arts can be, worrying that his limited savings will not sustain his training.
• He meets Ye Qingyao, Master Hong Tianbao’s skilled daughter, and Ye Wanqing, Hong’s wife. Qin gossips that Hong was a poor guard who became the Former Dynasty’s Martial Laureate before marrying into the wealthy Ye family.
• Hong overhears the rumor, denies being a live-in son-in-law, and punishes Qin by ordering him to add sandbags to his rickshaw training.
• Hong tests Li Xiang with an overwhelming display of pressure. Li Xiang withstands it without kneeling or retreating. Hong judges him untrained, unusually vital, and determined, though starting at twenty is late, and invites him to join the candidates.
• Addressing more than a hundred prospective students, Hong offers free tuition and promises to teach his best techniques. However, students must pay a third of the costs of food, medicinal baths, and weapons. He then warns that he intends to take their lives, leaving the meaning of his threat ominously unclear.

Character developments

• Li Xiang shows resourcefulness and financial awareness, but his resolve under Hong’s test reveals unusual courage and earns the master’s approval.
• Qin Zhong is revealed as a hardworking disciple who treats his day job as training. His eagerness to help Li Xiang gives way to comic panic when Hong catches him gossiping.
• Hong Tianbao contrasts his harmless, jovial appearance with immense power and authority. He is generous in offering instruction, yet his final warning hints that his training will be dangerous.
• Ye Qingyao is introduced as a beautiful but formidable martial artist, while Ye Wanqing is portrayed as an accomplished businesswoman from a wealthy family.

Significant themes

• Martial arts and money: Training requires costly food, medicine, and equipment, giving the wealthy a substantial advantage over the poor.
• Discipline in everyday life: Qin turns rickshaw work into purposeful physical training.
• Resolve under pressure: Li Xiang’s refusal to submit matters more to Hong than his age or lack of experience.
• The cost of opportunity: Free tuition is not truly free; the students face expenses—and perhaps mortal danger—in exchange for training.
• Appearance versus reality: Hong’s cheerful, round exterior conceals extraordinary strength and a stern master’s judgment.

Character interactions

• Qin guides Li Xiang around the hall, explains its customs, and shares stories about Hong’s family.
• Hong catches Qin gossiping, responds with humor rather than anger, and turns the moment into a stricter training assignment.
• Hong tests Li Xiang without warning, then recognizes his courage and gives him a chance to study.
• Hong addresses the gathered candidates directly, balancing the lure of free instruction with a blunt warning about its physical and financial costs.

Plot and key events

Hong Tianbao announces that Shocking Heron Martial Hall students will train for three years, after which he will take ten of the strongest to Tianjin to challenge ten local martial arts halls. The dangerous tradition demands that outsiders prove themselves in potentially lethal duels. Hong makes clear that he will force any selected students to go, and threatens severe punishment for anyone who tries to flee.
Most of the more privileged students leave, unwilling to risk their lives. About thirty remain, mainly poor youths seeking a chance at a better future. Li Xiang stays because the waived tuition and access to authentic martial arts are valuable, and he believes his unusual [Book of a Hundred Trades] may let him progress far faster than ordinary students.
The remaining students pay respects to the Martial Ancestor and take the apprenticeship oath. Hong then explains that martial arts are for combat and killing, not performance. He demonstrates foundational stance training and several fighting styles against his student Qin Zhong, including Hung Fist, Form-Intent Fist, Eight Trigrams Fist, Wing Chun, and the unfamiliar Intercepting Fist. The demonstrations show the different styles’ strengths and culminate in Intercepting Fist’s principle of anticipating and interrupting an opponent’s attack.
Hong orders the students to begin stance training at dawn. Qin Zhong takes the recruits to collect their clothes and offers Li Xiang practical training advice. In a private scene afterward, Hong’s daughter Ye Qingyao points out that he has concealed an important detail: even if the students win in Tianjin, they will be expelled from the city.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang makes a calculated choice to stay, treating the three-year commitment as an opportunity rather than a threat. He is impressed by Hong’s skill and eagerly asks Qin Zhong for training advice.
• Hong Tianbao reveals both his formidable martial knowledge and his ruthless pragmatism. He offers the students training and support in exchange for their risking their lives to establish his school in Tianjin.
• Qin Zhong serves as Hong’s demonstration partner and accepts being beaten hard, showing both his existing skill and enthusiasm for the training. He later bonds with Li Xiang as a friendly senior student.
• Ye Qingyao challenges her father’s honesty, exposing the costs he has left out of his recruitment speech. Hong’s immediate embarrassment contrasts with his commanding public persona.
• The recruits divide by circumstance: wealthy youths retreat, while poorer students remain, willing to gamble on martial training as a path out of poverty.

Significant themes

• Martial arts as practical violence: Hong rejects showmanship and insists that fighting skills must be effective against real threats.
• Opportunity versus risk: The school offers poor students a chance to improve their lives, but the price may be injury, death, or expulsion.
• Power and exploitation: Hong’s generous tuition offer is also a bargain that binds students to his ambitions.
• Skill, speed, and adaptability: The demonstration of Intercepting Fist emphasizes awareness and decisive timing over fixed forms or brute force.
• Truth and omission: Hong is candid about the danger of losing, but Ye Qingyao reveals that he has withheld what winning will cost.

Key plot points and events

• At dawn, the new students at the Shocking Heron Martial Hall endure a grueling first lesson: holding horse stances while Ye Qingyao patrols with a cane. Most collapse, but Li Xiang remains standing.
• Hong Tianbao explains that a proper horse stance is not rigid squatting: it requires subtle, continuous movement, like balancing on a living horse. Li Xiang follows the lesson unusually quickly, finding that the rhythm eases his pain and awakens the Golden Cicada within him. Under Hong’s guidance, he aligns his body and begins to feel unified, elastic power.
• Hong introduces the hall’s basic fist technique, Taizu Long Fist, which some students dismiss as commonplace. He demonstrates its force and calls it by its original name, Dragon Fist.
• Hong recounts how the Martial Ancestor, once a beggar, created the technique to inspire ordinary people to resist the Demon Dynasty and rise above oppression. The Demonkin later banned martial arts and destroyed half of the original thirty-six forms; only eighteen remain.
• Hong performs the surviving forms with overwhelming power, framing each strike as resistance to servility and oppression. Inspired, Li Xiang practices the moves with full commitment.
• Li Xiang unlocks the Boxer profession, gaining the beginner trait Dragon Spine, which improves his spine’s flexibility and explosive power, as well as his resistance to mental pressure.

Character developments

• Li Xiang proves exceptionally perceptive, quickly grasping the living quality of the stance and responding strongly to its rhythm. He moves from simply learning physical technique to understanding martial arts as a refusal to submit. His intense practice unlocks a new profession.
• Hong Tianbao reveals himself as both a skilled teacher and an impassioned guardian of Dragon Fist’s history and ideals. His easygoing manner gives way to commanding force during his demonstration.
• Ye Qingyao acts as a strict enforcer, keeping the students to their training through threats and well-aimed cane strikes.
• The other students begin the lesson exhausted and skeptical, but Hong’s demonstration leaves them awed.

Significant themes

• Motion within stillness: The horse stance teaches that strength comes not from rigidity but from balance, relaxation, and coordinated movement.
• Resistance and self-determination: Dragon Fist represents the courage of the powerless to refuse submission and change their fate.
• The cost of oppression: The incomplete technique carries the history of the Demonkin’s persecution and destruction of martial knowledge.
• Technique and spirit: Martial arts develop more than the body; their deeper purpose is to cultivate resolve and an unyielding will.

Character interactions

• Ye Qingyao disciplines the students, while Hong Tianbao later explains the purpose behind their painful training.
• Hong singles out Li Xiang to demonstrate the stance, corrects his posture directly, and recognizes his unusual ability.
• Hong’s demonstration challenges the students’ dismissal of a common technique, transforming their view of it—and inspiring Li Xiang to practice with conviction.

Key plot points and events

• During the night, Li Xiang’s Boxer profession grants him Dragon Spine, reshaping his spine into a spring-like structure that channels force through his body. Testing it in the courtyard, he lands a punch with striking explosive power and finds that his mind feels steadier under pressure.
• Li Xiang wonders whether different boxing styles might produce different profession traits. After nine days of training, he reaches Boxer Lv2, though ordinary practice earns experience slowly.
• To gain experience in another profession, he helps in the kitchen. Hong Tianbao explains that martial training depends heavily on proper food and medicine, and that cooking them correctly requires skill and understanding.
• Hong pays Li Xiang for his kitchen labor, insisting that students are not servants even though their tuition is waived in exchange for a future obligation. Li Xiang accepts the money and reaches Cook Lv8.
• During the students’ afternoon rest, Li Xiang chooses to use his time rather than sleep. He prepares paper and a brush, hinting at further plans.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang gains a physical and mental advantage from Dragon Spine, while remaining curious and disciplined. He actively seeks ways to advance his professions and make use of every opportunity.
• Hong Tianbao reveals himself as stern but principled. He treats cooking as essential martial knowledge and pays Li Xiang fairly, emphasizing the distinction between student and servant.
• Qin Zhong is briefly shown tending the kitchen fire while Hong cooks.

Significant themes

• Body and spirit: Dragon Spine improves not only Li Xiang’s physical power but also his resilience under pressure.
• Martial arts as holistic practice: Training, nutrition, medicine, and practical knowledge are presented as interconnected.
• Fairness and obligation: Hong’s arrangement with the students is transactional, but he maintains clear boundaries and pays for extra work.
• Discipline amid danger: Li Xiang’s refusal to waste time reflects his awareness of the chaotic world around him.

Plot points

• Li Xiang practices Painter by sketching people and objects, raising the profession to Lv5 and unlocking Bone-Drawing, which lets him perceive a target’s skeleton, muscles, and proportions.
• He realizes Painter abilities can strengthen his Boxer skills: steady brushwork improves the control and force of his punches, while anatomical insight helps him read an opponent’s stance and vulnerabilities. He concludes that professions can complement one another.
• Li Xiang asks Senior Brother Qin Zhong where to buy supplies for the Paper Effigy Maker path, and asks him to keep watch for suitable corpses for Embalmer work. Qin recommends Ink Fragrance Studio on Antique Street.
• Qin’s 107-year-old great-grandmother arrives at the Martial Arts Hall with food for him. Li Xiang uses Ironclad Divination and sees black, blood-tinged Fortune around her, with tendrils reaching toward Qin.
• He identifies her as a Heavenly Baleful Lone Star: someone whose extraordinary lifespan is sustained by the Fortune and years of close family members. Her family has been devastated, leaving Qin as its last surviving descendant.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Xiang grows more resourceful, combining knowledge across professions rather than treating each path separately. His curiosity and divination also reveal a disturbing truth about Qin’s family.
• Qin Zhong shifts from his usual boastful, carefree manner to genuine concern and affection when his great-grandmother appears. He eagerly eats the meal she brought, unaware—or seemingly unconcerned—that her fate may threaten him.
• Great-Grandmother Qin is loving and attentive, bringing Qin his favorite food and urging him to live a long life. Her tenderness contrasts sharply with the deadly nature of her Fortune.
• Qin and Li Xiang share a practical conversation about supplies and work before Li’s discovery turns the moment into an ominous one.

Significant themes

• The unity of different disciplines: Painter and Boxer skills reinforce each other, suggesting that professions offer overlapping ways to understand and affect the world.
• Hard-won advancement: Practical, sedentary skills like painting are easier to level than physically demanding combat skills.
• Love entangled with sacrifice: The old woman’s devotion to Qin is genuine, yet her long life appears to have come at the cost of her family.
• Fate beneath appearances: A warm family reunion hides a dangerous supernatural pattern, and Li Xiang’s divination exposes the threat behind it.