> **When Tokyo Tower was wrapped in the grasp of a hundred ghosts, and the Statue of Liberty rotted beneath a blood moon, **
> **the only light still burning was inside a paper effigy shop on a street corner in Huaxia.**
>
> On the seventh night after his death, Lu Zhibai was thrown into a morgue to feed the ghosts.
> At death’s door, he made a grinning paper effigy and smeared blood along its lips with his fingertip. “Tear this hell apart for me!”
>
>, And so New York’s vampires were beheaded by paper cutouts, Venice’s water ghosts were trapped in shadow puppetry, and Egypt’s scarab army was burned to ashes in the Vermilion Bird flames of Yangliuqing New Year paintings.
>
> The world was stunned to discover that Huaxia’s long-lost intangible cultural heritage crafts were weapons capable of slaying gods!
>
> Behind Lu Zhibai, the little paper effigy Shadow, who had grown strong by feeding on fear, stroked the marks around his neck with icy fingers:
> “Master, once we’ve gathered all the twenty-four solar-term treasures...”
> “Which do you think will happen first: you free me from my chains, or I devour you?”
>
> **[A Reader’s Guide]**
> ◼ The Corpse King of western Hunan drops into a Wall Street elevator | Miaojiang Gu poison mixed with black magic
> ◼ Chinese horror aesthetics × a war for the survival of civilization | Intangible heritage is no sentimental keepsake, it’s a killing move
> ◼ Paper-effigy ghost girl / life-and-death symbiosis / global treasure hunt | The Chronicles of Lu Zhibai, Night Watcher
