The damp southern town of Mossveil lies shrouded in fog all year round. The legend of the “yin child,” passed from mouth to mouth among the townsfolk, conceals a century-old bloody taboo. Lin Shen, a folklorist and social media blogger, comes here to investigate his younger sister's disappearance, only to discover that a string of murders and bizarre folk customs intertwine into a deadly trap: a corpse in red kneels before a church, divination patterns are carved into a tongue, and a heart has been replaced with a clay figurine. Worse still, his sister's belongings turn up in the hands of a victim who died ten years in the future.
As the investigation deepens, Lin Shen uncovers a cycle of sacrifice that repeats every sixty years: people were buried alive to pray for rain in 1932, a traveling opera troupe hanged its dead in 1984, and organs are trafficked in the present day. The legend of the “yin child” has been used to disguise every atrocity. He is forced to face the bloody truth: he was supposed to have died as a sacrificial offering, and his sister traded her life for his and altered his memories. The mastermind, the town chief and a father-and-son pair of priests, use the names of ghosts and gods to cover up organ trafficking, while hallucinogenic fungi and mechanical puppets are used to fake supernatural phenomena.
The collision of folkloric details and quantum physics, and the clash between livestream comments and traditional Nuo opera, reach a climax when a torrential downpour washes away the mass grave in the final chapter. When Lin Shen uses a drone to scatter incense ash and break the formation, then leaves with his sister's ashes, the reflection in the rearview mirror reveals a child in red, hinting at an even deeper horror. Perhaps the legend, nourished by collective guilt, is itself a living curse.
