The Eerie Courier of the Nine Gates: Delivering Letters of Life and Death at the Yin-Yang Post Station

Main plot: I, Zhou Cheng, was an ordinary night watchman in Qingyang City. Then, on a rainy night, an old courier station manager shoved half a bronze tiger tally into my hands, and I took over the delivery of life-and-death letters for the Yin-Yang Courier Station. Every letter sealed with a vermilion strip carried a ghostly scent: the fragrance of rotting leaves was the regret of someone about to die, while agarwood was the resentment of a soul that had met a violent end. The first letter I delivered to a haunted house even left me feeling my own fingerprint on the door knocker. As I delivered more and more letters, I gradually discovered that every recipient was connected to a massacre from twelve years ago. And every time I delivered a letter, a black mark appeared on my forehead: the seal of the Substitute Death Pact. When I used my golden finger, the ability to recognize souls by the scent of letters, to solve the seventh reversed letter, I found my own corpse inside. Su Wanshuang, the pawnshop proprietress who had always helped me interpret omens, had half a tiger tally identical to mine hidden in the red cord around her wrist...

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Please do not imitate.