Ghost Blows Out the Light

Ghost Blows Out the Light is a long tomb-raiding mystery novel series by Tianxia Bachang, first serialized on the Tianya Forum in 2006 and regarded as the pioneering work of the Chinese tomb-raiding genre. Framed around a fragmentary secret manual passed down in the family, the story follows the "Golden Touch trio": the veteran Hu Bayi, his good friend Wang Pangzi, and the later-joining Chinese-American Shirley Yang. Using the ancestral Sixteen-Character Manual of Yin-Yang Feng Shui, they read the terrain and venture deep into lost tombs and ruins beneath the earth. The series establishes the tomb-raider's rule of "a human lights the candle, a ghost blows it out": after entering a tomb, one must light a candle in the southeast corner; if the flame goes out, one must retreat the way one came without taking anything. The narrative thread is the lifting of the ancient curse left by the journey to the Ruins of the Black Desert, linking geographic spaces such as the Western Regions' deserts, the northern Shaanxi plateau, the Yunnan rainforest, the Tibetan snowfields, the Greater Khingan Mountains, and the seabed of the South China Sea. It blends feng shui and divination, folk legends, local customs, and the rules of the tomb-raiding trade. The language is witty and crisp, the narrative bold and sweeping, gradually unveiling history within a bizarre and eerie subterranean world. The 2019 Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House edition comprises eight volumes: The City of Ruins, The Dragon Ridge Maze, The Yunnan Worm Valley, Kunlun Divine Palace, The Yellow Weasel Tomb, Return to the South Sea, Angry Clear Xiangxi, and Coffin Mountain of Wu Gorge.