Synopsis of the story of "Midnight Photo Studio"
In the rainy Qiye City, truck driver Zhao Dagen mistakenly entered a midnight photo studio that was only open at midnight due to a midnight delivery. The boss handed him a cup of hot tea with a red candle wick floating on it, but the photo he took showed that he would die in a car accident the next day. In order to decipher the omens of death, Zhao Dagen roped in his cousin Wu Dabo, a newspaper reporter who firmly believes in science, to launch an investigation. The two discovered that the photo studio was recorded in the local chronicle as "burned down in 1949", and that the face of the woman wearing a cheongsam in the yellowed photo in the window was always obscured by shadows.
As the investigation deepened, they came across photos of "unborn babies" in the film library. Wu Dabo briefly traveled to 1948 and witnessed the tragedy of a cheongsam woman being sacrificed alive as a "time watcher." Lao Zhou - the editor of local chronicles - secretly obstructed them, warning them that "the return of the dead will cause disaster." When Zhao Dagen reflected the light of the red candle with the ancient mirror left by his aunt, the cheongsam woman screamed and revealed the truth: Zhao family ancestors used red candles to sacrifice living people to maintain the balance of yin and yang, and the death omen in the photo was actually a "time debt." If Zhao Dagen escapes death, Wu Dabo will become the scapegoat.
In the end, Zhao Dagen drove towards the foreshadowed accident scene and deceived the time rules. The photo studio disappeared, but Wu Dabo received a new photo - childhood Zhao Dagen standing behind him, suggesting that the cycle has not been broken. When the red candle went out, A Cui's whisper drifted in the wind: "Next midnight, the clock will ring again..."
