The Qimen Sorcerer

The story begins with the tsunami triggered by the great Indian Ocean earthquake on December 26, 2004. Few know that an hour before the tsunami struck, in an ordinary small town in northern China thousands of miles away, a middle-aged sorcerer had already used divination arts to calculate the disaster. This man was "my" master. The master said that heavenly secrets are hidden deep and only occasionally flicker into view; and even if you detect them, it may not be a blessing, because you can only watch helplessly as living beings are destroyed, unable to change the predetermined facts—before a catastrophe, a person is as small as a speck of dust. The book is told in the first person and recounts a series of strange events that "I" experienced while studying divination arts under my master and traveling about: starting from an ancient bell, house malevolence, and the wooden bagua of a burial site, we gradually come into contact with such arts as Dharma Qimen, the Death Gate, and the Three Wonders and Six Rites; to divine events, find lost objects, and expel malevolence, master and disciple travel through the waterfalls and stone villages of the Taihang Mountains, the old villages and village temples along the Yellow River, and Guzhui Village and Ghost Creek, and also encounter folk taboos such as wandering spirits entering tombs, possession, and soul summoning. As clues such as the descendants of the Ran clan and the old case of Mount Mengding surface, an old account concerning the Nine Stars Falling Formation and the "Ancestor of All Malevolence" is reopened, and the contest between humans and ghosts, arts and fate draws step by step toward its conclusion. The book concludes at Chapter 95, "The Grand Finale," and has a companion volume, Secret Records of the Sorcerer, which continues the folk tales of the same sorcerer world.