Millennium Tomb Affairs

The life of ancient book restorer Shen Yan is turned upside down when his third uncle Shen Changhe mysteriously disappears. Clues hidden in a book spine—a deerskin cinnabar paper, half of the ancestral 'Dragon-Seeking Fragmentary Manual,' and an inverted 'death-demanding coin' mark on the wall—all point to a Ming dynasty royal tomb deep in the dragon vein of Qionglai, western Sichuan. He teams up with antique dealer Hou Degui, veteran soldier Zhou Tieshan, and old tomb robber Hao Yunshan to enter the mountains, only to be intercepted by tomb guardian Luo Qingwu. When they finally break through the dragon vein entrance, they find the tomb door already half-open—thirty years ago, a tomb-raiding team was wiped out here, and their leader Xie Wujiu, trapped inside for three decades, has set a deadly trap to lure newcomers. Interlocking mechanisms, poisonous miasma, corpse beetles, and hidden secrets of their fathers' generation surface one by one. This tomb is not a royal burial for gold, but a dragon-suppressing prison burial. Shen Yan gradually realizes his own origins are carved into the tomb—he has stepped not into a treasure hunt, but a life-and-death game written thirty years ago. — Description from novelcodex.org