In the 23rd year of the Republic of China, Maplewood Village in western Hunan.
Mr. Zhou knelt on the bluestone slab of the ancestral hall, his forehead pressed against the cold ground. Three sticks of incense burn straight in the incense burner, and the green smoke winds into strange shapes between the beams and pillars.
"My ancestors..." The old man's skinny fingers held a yellow talisman on which twisted symbols were drawn with cinnabar. "The blood debt owed by the Zhou family must be repaid."
Suddenly a baby's cry came from the back hall. The midwife ran out sweating profusely: "It's a nurse! But... But there is a blood-red birthmark on the palm of the child's right hand, which looks very similar..."
Before he finished speaking, a loud noise came from the direction of the ancestral hall. When everyone rushed in, they saw Mr. Zhou bleeding from all his orifices and the yellow talisman in his hand burned to ashes. In the copper basin in the corner, a severed finger was floating in the blood.
That night, the entire Maplewood Village heard crying sounds - the sound was like a woman sobbing or a baby crying. It floated out from the "Ghost Crying Forest" in the forbidden area behind the village and wrapped around the beams of every house.
