Folklore professor Qi Hongyu received a letter without a postmark. The paper exuded the sweet smell of rotten apples. There was only one line on it:
"The fruit trees have been hungry for twenty-two years, and it's time to feed them."
Twenty-two years ago, her mother, journalist Su Rui, disappeared after investigating the mysterious sacrifices of the Goluo people on the Yunnan border, leaving only a mutilated notebook and a silver apple pendant. The last page of the note reads:
"When the fruit trees begin to sing, the chosen ones will hear their names."
In order to find the whereabouts of his mother, Qi Hongyu took his assistant Qin Chuan deep into the Guoluo Ancient Village. Everything here is shrouded in strange taboos:
You must not eat apples from the Forbidden Forest, otherwise your belly will be filled with tree roots the next day;
On the night of the moon festival, children under the age of ten must hide in the cellar, otherwise they will be "carried away by the fruit trees";
The villagers were afraid of the color red, but they wore blood-stained robes during sacrifices and danced around the dead sacrificial tree.
What's even more frightening is that Qi Hongyu found that bark-like lines began to appear on his skin, and Qin Chuan's camera captured something that shouldn't exist - in the photo, the villagers had no shadows in the moonlight.
That night, she heard her mother's call coming from the ground:
"Hongyu... Come to the tree... I'll wait for you here..."
The village elder grinned, revealing his rotten gums:
"Your mother escaped from the sacrifice, and now the fruit tree wants you to repay the debt."
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