The worlds of the living and the dead are separate, and ordinarily, no contact is permitted across the divide. And yet in Chinese tradition, the so-called [eldritch flame / shadow flame], which involves the burning of rhinoceros horn, is a proverbial method of piercing the veil between the mortal realm and the hereafter. What is the truth behind this legend?Liu Cheng, a wealthy young entrepreneur from the countryside, heads for the provincial capital with a band of his village brothers to set up a Chinese herbal medicine shop, and in only four short years manages to turn his establishment The Immortal Herb Store into the finest in the land. His ambition fulfilled, Liu is anxious to return home to be reunited with his wife and young daughter. A blazing inferno, however, shatters all his dreams. On the night before his departure, Liu's plan to have a farewell get-together with his village brothers is tragically interrupted when The Immortal Herb Store is burnt to the ground by a blazing fire. Rushing into the conflagration with no thought of his own safety, Liu is unable to save any of his trapped friends, and can only watch them die one by one in the most gruesome ways -- entangled in a pulley-rope while fleeing and choked to death, falling from a great height, crushed beneath tons of falling debris, or simply roasted alive... |