The Yin Contract

Behind the neon-lit facade of the city, there is a business that only opens late at night. Shen Ci, a fortune teller in the old district 'Fu'an Li', goes by the sign 'Shen Half-Octogram'. He does not predict fortunes or marriages, because of the eerie patterns crawling up his left forearm—the 'Yin Contract'. The living borrow luck from the King of Hell, and he acts as the middleman. Borrow a bit of wealth, lose ten years of life; alter a fate once, and after death, do a dirty job for the underworld messengers. Until a forensic doctor drags a 'corpse' into his stall. The corpse has a stolen-life button on its wrist, a six-line hexagram painted on its chest, yet the cause of death reads: none. Even more terrifying, the forensic doctor, Lin Wan—a staunch atheist—has a scar on her wrist from a fate-altering ritual she herself has forgotten. As the city is rocked by a series of 'hexagram killings', Shen Ci discovers that the tattered 'Yin Contract Record' left by his grandfather contains not just forbidden methods to alter fate, but a long 'death list'. And his name is prominently on it. When the underworld calls the roll and ghosts roam the night, Shen Ci realizes: the most terrifying thing in this world is not ghosts, but those who, to survive, do not hesitate to make deals with them. — Description from novelcodex.org