My name is Mia Westcott. Third year, forensic medicine, police academy.

Everything in my life split open the day I laid a hand on a thousand-year-old corpse.

I got forced by a body that climbed out of a coffin.

That day, the Cultural Relics Bureau sent over a corpse dug out of an ancient tomb, along with a heavy stone coffin. It was handed to the school first for forensic dissection and identification. I was there as an assistant, standing off to the side, doing the dirty work no one cared about.

A few workers in cotton gloves braced themselves and shoved the coffin lid aside together.

The body inside was exposed.

I took one look and froze where I stood.

It wasn’t some blackened, rotten carcass.

It was a young man.

His features were clean and fine, like they’d been carved from white jade. His brows curved like distant hills, faintly drawn together, carrying a trace of sorrow. His eyes were shut lightly, so still he looked less like a dead man than someone sleeping through a long night.

His fingers, pale and straight as jade chopsticks, were folded neatly over a belt embroidered with a silver-thread flood dragon. From the belt hung a pair of exquisite phoenix jade pendants.

He wore a white shuixiu burial robe. His black hair, dark as spilled ink, was bound by a purple-gold crown. On his feet were boots edged with gold thread.

The coffin had just been opened. His skin was fully exposed to the air without any protection at all, yet it showed no sign of oxidation. Smooth, flawless, bright as ever. Better than living flesh.

This was no corpse.

This was a living thing shut in death’s shell.

“What are you standing around for? Hand me the scalpel. Mia Westcott, watch carefully and learn. This may be the greatest discovery in modern archaeology and anatomy.” The teacher, mask over his face, was trembling with excitement. His eyes were shining. He stared into the coffin like a starving man staring at meat.

My hand stiffened around the scalpel.

In my head, I could already see that beautiful young man with his chest cut open and his guts spilled out. Cold sweat gathered on my forehead. My fingertips shook.

The sharp scalpel slipped from my hand and dropped into the stone coffin.

The blade skimmed down the young man’s face.

Cut.

His face was ruined.

A line split that white, creamy skin open. But no blood came out. Instead, from the wound, something black poured forth in a dense surge, like a filthy tide breaking loose.

My eyes blurred with panic. I forced them wider, blinked hard several times, then finally saw it clearly.

Worms.

Long, black worms, twisted and knotted together into a writhing clump of darkness.

Right then, a strange fragrance spread through the air.

It was rich, almost intoxicating. Like rotting roses—sweet enough to turn your head, but underneath it lurked the stench of decaying flesh. The scent spread little by little, then filled the whole dissection room.

I lowered my head, already prepared to be cursed out.

But after a long while, no sound came.

Slowly, I looked around.

Everyone in the room had collapsed soundlessly to the floor.

Workers. Teachers. Every last one.

My mind went blank.

A chill ran straight down my spine and burst through my bones.

What was going on?

Why had they all dropped?

Then the young man in the coffin opened his eyes.

Those eyes had no focus.

No whites.

No pupils.

Just a strange blue-green color, dead and cold, like ghost fire trapped in ice.

Outside, night had already swallowed the sky. The fluorescent lamps in the dissection room all flickered at once.

In that instant, cold sweat soaked me through. The fear didn’t come from outside. It rose straight from the deepest place in my chest, thick and black, choking me. My calves cramped where I stood. I couldn’t move.

Then I saw the young man jerk upright.

The wound across his face, made by my scalpel, looked savage and terrifying.

The corpse had risen.

This thing buried in an ancient tomb for a thousand years—

it had come alive.

My stomach twisted so hard I thought I’d throw up. Not only had the thousand-year corpse come alive, it slowly stretched a pale hand out from the coffin, gripped the stone edge, and spoke in a low, sinister voice cold enough to freeze blood.

“You wanted to cut me open, didn’t you?”

I was just an intern.

Just dragged over to help.

Just cheap labor.

I was innocent!

But I was so scared I couldn’t force out a single word. I didn’t have the nerve to defend myself. The only sound in the room was my teeth knocking together like they wanted to shatter.

I stumbled back on instinct, but my leg hit the operating table behind me. My hand found the edge of it. I didn’t think anymore. I scrambled up like a madwoman, trying to vault over it and run.

Nothing mattered now but staying alive.

I climbed onto the table clumsily.

Then a hand, cold as solid ice, clamped around my wrist.

The next second, a heavy body slammed down over mine.

That freezing touch shot through skin and bone and punched straight into my heart. My whole body seemed to lock up in frost. I went rigid, unable to move.

“You smelled the Manzhushahua fragrance and didn’t faint?” The man looked down at me from above. Those blue-green eyes were cold and arrogant, full of a cruel certainty. “Then you are the woman I’ve been looking for.”

A pale shaft of moonlight fell across the operating table.

It lit one side of the young man’s face in a dim blue sheen, eerie and unnatural.

His fingers locked hard around my chin. His black hair spilled across my cheek. With his other hand, he ripped off my white coat.

Then, rough and without the least bit of mercy, he dragged the white dress beneath it down to my waist.

That cold gaze swept over my collarbone—

and lower—

all the way to my abdomen…