Excuse me, I have a question about Tomb of the Sea. Do you know the time range where the story takes place? In Mystic Nine the trains are coal powered but the TotS it seems more modern. Yet, Zhang RiShan is there looking like he never aged. Plus, the drama starts in 1903 and the war in ChangSa supposedly happens in 1939. So I'm confused. I didn't start TofS and want to place the time of events first. Thank you.
Oh Tomb Of The Sea is set in modern day, the novel was first started in 2013 but the drama probably updated some of the tech stuff to match 2018. Rishan doesn’t age due to the fact that he’s from the Zhang Clan, which is further explicated in Dao Mu Bi Ji. All in all, he is the only one left from the Mystic Nine era and if I remember correctly off the top of my head, he should be ~100 years old? All the characters in the Nine Gates Company should be at least two generations down from the Mystic Nine characters. Which is why, Rishan is at same status with the grandparent generation in the show.
Tomb Of The Sea is a sequel to DMBJ, while The Mystic Nine is the prequel to DMBJ. The original novels didn’t really link up the prequel and sequel but stuff was changed (lines were still written by Nan Pai San Shu) for the drama to have more correlation because the same company produced both works. Which is why they will reference or flashback to The Mystic Nine time frame. Zhang Rishan isn’t actually supposed to have such a big role in the story (he’s just mentioned in passing in the novel) but the plot was changed slightly to connect all the subplots more. A lot of the story progression is then initiated from his character.