Daomu

Daomu (盗墓) is the plain Chinese word for tomb robbing, and it also names one of China's most popular adventure genres. A team goes down into an ancient tomb, finds traps, puzzles, strange creatures and something that should have stayed buried, and comes out changed, if it comes out at all. Fans also call it daodou (倒斗), slang that tomb robbers supposedly used for their trade.

The genre took off online in the 2000s with two web novel series: Nanpai Sanshu's Daomu Biji (盗墓笔记), known in English as The Lost Tomb, and Tianxia Bachang's Ghost Blows Out the Light (鬼吹灯). Both became long-running franchises of dramas and films. Because tomb robbing is illegal in China and the genre leans on the supernatural, adaptations usually tone both down: the heroes are explorers or protectors of relics, and the monsters often get a scientific or psychological explanation by the end.

Expect a few things in any daomu drama. There's a mentor who knows the old rules, a skeptic, a comic sidekick and a silent fighter. There are feng shui and divination, rival teams, foreign collectors and a map nobody fully understands.

Mystic Nine is a daomu drama set in the 1930s, with a vanished army unit, an underground tower and a Japanese experiment at its center.