Panguan: The Twelfth Gate (Novel)

From the author and universe of Copper Coins and Three Hundred Years of Longing comes a modern-day, supernatural danmei (Boys’ Love) story about a man without a soul and the one determined to save him at all costs. As a panguan, a cultivator tasked with putting the dead to rest, Wen Shi has spent a thousand years sending souls on to their next life. But without a soul of his own, he’s trapped in an endless cycle of rebirth, desperately searching for the lost pieces of himself. Now, reborn for the twelfth time, he feels a constant hunger that can only be satisfied by consuming the dark miasma that clings to the dead. So when failed panguan Xie Wen responds to Wen Shi’s ad for a roommate, Wen Shi is taken aback by the dense miasma cloaking the handsome young man. Smug and irritating, Xie Wen instantly becomes Wen Shi’s most tempting meal. Yet the longer Wen Shi spends with Xie Wen, the more mysterious he seems. Xie Wen appears to know things about Wen Shi even Wen Shi has forgotten—things that could end his millennium of lonely wandering.

THREADS OF THE PASTAfter unwittingly walking into a cage disguised as a terrifying escape room, Wen Shi, Xie Wen, and their unlikely band of companions find themselves trapped inside a haunted mansion with a gruesome secret buried in its past. Each clue they unearth seems to contradict the last: Is the ghost haunting the halls the perpetrator of the horror—or a victim herself? As members of their party disappear one by one, Wen Shi grudgingly teams up with Xie Wen to uncover the truth. Wen Shi has never been one to rely on others. But the longer he works alongside Xie Wen, the more strangely familiar he seems. As they unravel the house’s mystery, this enigmatic man appears to anticipate Wen Shi’s every thought…almost as if they’ve known each other for a long, long time.