The Zombie Ancestor: The Demon Star Descends

First-person narrative

In that war-torn era, common folk suffered through the fighting and lived in extreme poverty. In a remote mountain village, a shocking and strange event took place. It was a year of unrelenting drought: the fields yielded nothing, the land was parched with no water for irrigation, and every household in the village was out of food, struggling to survive on wild greens and tree bark. Yet one family, the Nie household, was just as poor. The head of the family had recently died after a long illness, leaving behind only a beautiful young wife, pregnant with the sole heir of the Nie family.

Strangely, during those days when the household had neither water nor food, the Nie family's water jar was always filled to the brim each morning, and there were always hunted mountain pheasants, badgers, and the like in their courtyard. The villagers began to gossip about the Nie family's daughter-in-law.

Some of the village elders, who knew a thing or two, brought up the old tale of a drought demon whose appearance left a thousand miles of land barren. Before long, the villagers came to believe that the Nie family's daughter-in-law was an ill omen.

And so the entire village joined forces to drive the Nie family's daughter-in-law to her death. On the day of her burial...