Shen Gui runs a feng shui shop on the old street. Its storefront is small, but business never stops.
Someone is tormented by a vengeful ghost, waking every night to see bloody hands closing around their throat. Shen Gui goes, sets up an array, draws talismans, binds the ghost, and guides it to the afterlife. He gets the job done cleanly, and the ghost leaves without a fuss. Then he tells the client, “The ghost is gone. I've also sent the economic crimes investigators the evidence of what you did to drive your partner to suicide ten years ago.”
At someone's wedding, paper effigies start walking on their own, and the bride is too terrified to leave the house. Shen Gui goes and splashes a bowl of talisman water, revealing a vengeful spirit: the bride's aborted child. He tells the groom, “Did you ever think about this day when you forced her to get an abortion? Get down on your knees and apologize, and I'll let this child go.”
Someone else keeps visiting a grave late at night to cry, but the person buried there isn't their daughter. A wild dog that was buried alive has become a ghost and mistakenly possessed someone. Shen Gui lays the dog to rest and reports the construction crew, too.
He kills ghosts and holds people accountable. He shows no favoritism.
Until one day, he encounters a ghost that harms no one: the lingering spirit of a girl who jumped to her death, sitting in the back row of a classroom every day to listen to lessons simply because no one remembered her when she was alive. For the first time, Shen Gui doesn't put up the talisman he has drawn.
He realizes there are things he can't help pass on to the afterlife!
This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.