Once night falls at the funeral shop, the living must keep away.
After my father died, I was forced to inherit the eerie paper effigy shop in our old home in western Hunan. By day, I sell funeral wreaths and paper horses. At nine each night, the oil-paper lanterns glow dimly, and the shop becomes a marketplace for restless ghosts and vengeful spirits.
My father left behind only three ironclad rules: work the night shift from nine to five, use a “brick phone” that takes orders only from the underworld, and, most importantly, remember four words: “Don't be surprised by ghosts.”
On my first night, a dripping-wet water ghost demands a paper boat. At an abandoned old house, a blood-red paper kite awakens a dormant evil spirit. More terrifying still, the paper effigy I made with my own hands comes alive in the dark... Under the elusive guidance of Seventh Master Xie Wujiu, I gradually uncover the truth: my father wasn't an ordinary craftsman, but a guardian who maintained the balance between Yin and Yang. His death was tied to a staggering conspiracy by Sima Zhongxuan, a judge of the underworld!
Orders keep pouring in on the brick phone, forcing me to travel through the eerie reaches of western Hunan and the terrifying underworld: the thousand-year-old grudge of a Miao girl who vanished into a flower cave, the paradox of Granny Meng's soup on the Bridge of Helplessness, and the power struggles among the Black and White Impermanence... The ancient taboos of paper effigy making have become my weapons. The living can be saved, but debts to the dead are hard to repay. On this road between Yin and Yang, soaked in paper ash and blood, I am both shopkeeper and the last line of defense for the human world.
