The Night Watchman by Lamplight

My name is Mo Ya. I'm an unlucky man cursed with ninety-nine calamities. At twenty-four, I unexpectedly became entangled with a water monkey and was infected with corpse poison that couldn't be cured. I have only two or three years left to live. To prolong my life and resist the calamities written into my fate, I became a night watchman who keeps a lamp burning, wandering between reality and the uncanny. I have strayed farther and farther down a path utterly unlike the one most people take...