Also known as The Strange Craftsman of the Countryside: Lamplight in the Well and The Corpse-Sewing Lantern
Young Chen Qiyue’s grandfather is a mysterious corpse seamster. On the night he disappears, all he leaves behind is half a dirty corpse-oil lamp and a warning never to be ignored. The villagers are tight-lipped, afraid because of his identity as a “strange craftsman.” Ignoring their pleas, Chen Qiyue hears his grandfather coughing from the deep well in the old house and finds a fragment of his burial robe. Determined to uncover the truth, he lights the half-lamp. Its ghostly green flame reveals a horrifying sight: invisible threads are stitching his own flesh into the shape of a stranger.
From then on, Chen Qiyue is forced into a hidden world filled with arcane arts, sinister feng shui, and terrifying evil spirits. He must inherit the ancient tradition of the “strange craftsman” and join forces with fellow practitioners, including Zhong Suyi, an inheritor of paper effigy crafting, to fight evil artisans who control the dead and feng shui masters lurking behind the scenes. From desolate graves to the border between yin and yang, danger lurks at every turn, and nothing is as it seems. Can he uncover his family’s fate, find his grandfather, and stop a terrifying conspiracy capable of overturning the balance between yin and yang? The lamp flickers, the needle and thread move in silence. What is being mended is not only flesh, but a fate sinking into ruin.
