A Hundred Journeys Home

After I died, I arrived in a world just like the real one.

A million dead people live here. Complete a hundred challenges, and you can come back to life or have any one wish granted. But even staying alive is a pipe dream: the survival rate for the first challenge is six percent; by the ninety-fourth, it's 0.05 percent; by the hundredth, it's zero.

The challenges are set by ghosts. They were once people, too, and each is driven by an obsession: a clockmaker wants to save his ancestral clock from a fire, an eight-year-old girl wants to find someone who will never abandon her, and a director wants everyone to finish performing his script. Eighty percent of the challenges reenact a ghost's life.

And I, Lin Chen, am the only one who can truly figure out how to beat the ghosts. The price is that every time I empathize with one, another fragment appears in my dreams. They argue and fight over my body. The closer I get to clearing the challenges, the harder it becomes to tell whether I'm acting out a ghost's story or a ghost's story is acting me out.

My little sister says, “Hang in there, big brother.” Su Wan puts on her wedding ring and says, “You still have me.” One teammate after another falls. The chairs for the twelve seats are empty in the last row.

A hundred challenges. At the end of this road paved with despair, will we be resurrected, or is another game waiting for us?

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