Blood Night Phoenix

Blood Night Phoenix is a long suspense and supernatural novel by the web author Wuyong, following his earlier work Lin Bing Dou Zhe Jie Zhen Lie Zai Qian. It was first published on 17K.com, runs about 827,000 Chinese characters, and uses a traditional serialized structure of twelve collections and eighty-one chapters, the last titled "Nine Nines Return to One." The story begins with a long-circulating legend: in a mysterious cave somewhere in the north, an unnamed monster is sealed by "Blood Night Phoenix," one of the three great sorceries of the witch clan. On a stormy day, a greedy fortune-teller, attempting to refine the art of the Five Ghosts' Transport, recklessly casts a spell and accidentally breaks the seal; the monster seizes the moment of heavenly tribulation to possess a college student's body and hide from divine punishment. To fight the monster inside him and avoid dragging those around him into danger, the possessed man painfully gives up his romance, leaves his parents and grandparents, and goes into hiding in an old county town by the Yellow River, where he opens a small bookshop and lives under a false name for ten years. Yet fate does not let him go: gang warfare, treacherous business dealings, and the pursuit of a mysterious sect lurking in the shadows follow one after another. The witch and Taoist factions revive old grudges, and he is repeatedly pulled into the center of the storm, forced to weigh love, duty, and the danger of his own loss of control. With the phoenix's nirvana as its central image, the novel depicts a small man in near-hopeless darkness who, at the cost of nearly destroying himself, guards the last bit of light in his heart.