Seven-Day Specter Game: Spreading Intangible Cultural Heritage in a Haunted Gambling Den

[Fast-paced, no padding, intricately plotted, rule-based horror] Jiang Lin, a graduate student in folk culture, receives a bronze case engraved with a Nuo opera mask. A countdown written in blood drags him into a deadly game on its very first day. During a night watch at a funeral home, the Rules of the Underworld quietly take effect: never look directly into the hollow eyes of a person wearing mourning clothes, and extinguish every light at two in the morning. When a corpse-possessed “family member” approaches with a Republican-era ghost-marriage contract, Jiang Lin dons a Nuo opera mask and performs a warding dance, exposing a scheme to sacrifice the living. Prophetic code hidden inside the bronze case, astrological warnings from the mysterious hacker “Judge,” and the deathly lingering impressions sensed by intern Lin Xiaoyu intertwine into the first day's web of mysteries. He thinks escaping the ghost-marriage trap means victory, but the countdown inside the case restarts, and a map of an ancient Yellow River crossing and the corpse marks spreading across his left hand signal an even greater danger. This deadly game is only the prologue to a battle of cause and effect spanning a thousand years.