Fogbound Huai Creek Village

Chen Mo, a provincial capital reporter, receives a call announcing a death in his hometown of Huaixi Village. The thousand-year-old locust tree at the village entrance has withered before its time. And Zhao Laonian, a lazy man who died under mysterious circumstances, has a rosy complexion and shows no signs of decay despite the damp autumn chill. Worse still, a strange symbol has been drawn on his chest in cinnabar, and beside him lies a crooked line of blood: “Xiaohua is back.” Twenty years ago, a girl believed to have drowned in the Dumb River disappeared. Her name has become taboo throughout the village. Chen Mo meant to make a quick visit and leave, but instead he stumbled upon the lies the villagers had woven together. The fog shrouds more than the mountain roads: it also conceals the murder that was buried in a deep well twenty years ago. When paper figures turn around in the middle of the night and a mute begins to speak, Chen Mo realizes the most terrifying ghosts in this world are not the dead. They're the living, who are willing to sacrifice others to the abyss to protect their secrets. This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.