The Wanderer Returns on the Forty-Ninth Night

On the day of his grandfather's funeral, Xu Zhao returned to his hometown through the rain. Halfway there, he wandered into a night banquet with no bride. The next day, his portrait stood in the funeral tent, while his mother's voice came from deep inside the coffin: "Zhaozhao, open the door." When he was eight, he borrowed a breath from the water and returned to life. Now, with the forty-ninth night almost over, the White-Robed Lord of the Underworld has come to collect an old debt and use his body to return to the world of the living. Xie Xiao, the red-clad ghost who learned the truth first, ties a red thread around his wrist. She wants to use him to lure the Lord away from his seat and retrieve the bones buried beneath a statue for three hundred years. She has shielded him from ghosts, but hidden her most dangerous plan from him for a long time. To stay alive, Xu Zhao has no choice but to take her through the fox clan's night banquet, an old painting in a ruined temple, a harbor in a mirage-like city, and a mountain temple without lamps. Familiar voices call him to turn around again and again in the night. After forty-nine nights, who will return from the coffin?

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