The Thirteen Hells

Forty years ago, a violent clash broke out at a factory deep in the mountains. The scene was bizarre: the dead bore no wounds, yet the floor and rooms were soaked in blood, as if the place had become the "Pool of Blood Hell," the lowest of the thirteen Buddhist hells. A young woman who should have been there had vanished, leaving only a scorched black mark on the ground. Forty years later, in the small third-tier city of Beiyang, unlicensed cab driver Zhou Yuan is carrying a passenger late at night when he witnesses a man spontaneously combust before his eyes, again leaving only a patch of scorched earth. Before the fear can subside, Zhou Yuan is horrified to discover that his own blood will also burst into flames without warning. To escape a death by spontaneous combustion, he and his friends race from place to place, investigating the truth behind this strange affliction. As six cases of spontaneous human combustion occur in succession and the details of the factory murder forty years earlier gradually fall into place, a secret hidden in the blood comes to the surface. Only then does Zhou Yuan realize that learning the truth does not mean the problem is solved; it may only be the beginning of a much greater trouble. Told through dual narratives that alternate between the Cultural Revolution era and the contemporary city, the book combines the Buddhist image of the "Pool of Blood Hell" with scientific hypotheses, building an ambitious framework that spans mystery, thriller, and science fiction while exploring the entanglement between blood and life, civilization and the primitive, and good and evil.