Corpse Paper

In the muddy hollow of Xiangbei, I'm a yin craftsman who makes paper effigies to ward off disaster for others.

For most people, making paper effigies is just a livelihood. The figures I make can die in place of the living.

I thought I was merely borrowing yin life to trade for peace. But then the corpse-suppressing carpenter died horribly, a pregnant corpse came at midnight to claim its unborn child, and a corpse beneath the bed spoke words that gnawed at the bones... Only after one sinister incident after another came knocking did I realize that, ever since I entered this trade, the things of yin had seen me as a "corpse keeper."

A paper figure with closed eyes is harmless; once its eyes open, it will claim a life.

If a mortise-and-tenon joint fails to lock a corpse in place, it will lock around your throat instead.

I can't understand ghost speech, but I can taste the words of the dead: bitterness means resentment, a bloody tang means blood. It doesn't want my life. It wants me to make it a paper body that can enter the world of the living.

From the dark arts of the craft guilds to yin wood that suppresses corpses and substitutes that nurture evil, I tread carefully between the living and the yin underworld's agents.

Along the way, paper figures remember every slight, and the dead come to collect their debts. The lives I've saved will sooner or later come back to demand repayment, with interest.