Lin Feng is a history graduate student working hard in the city. When his grandfather, Lin Jianguo, suddenly dies, he is forced to return to the hometown he left ten years ago: Lin Family Village, deep in the mountains. As soon as he arrives, he senses that something is wrong. The villagers avoid his gaze, and his grandfather's death is vaguely attributed to “an old illness flaring up again.” Yet the oil lamp in the mourning hall, which should have burned through the night, mysteriously goes out on the evening he arrives. While sorting through his grandfather's belongings, Lin Feng discovers something even stranger: hidden inside the wall of his grandfather's bedroom is a damaged family genealogy, its missing pages covered in twisted symbols he cannot understand. Locked in a drawer is a wooden box with the words “Seventh month, thirteenth day. Do not open the west window” carved into its base.
In the days that follow, strange things happen one after another. Every night, a woman sobs outside the courtyard, but when anyone opens the door, there is no one there. Bloody scraps of cloth have been dredged from the old well at the eastern end of the village, their patterns identical to the symbols on the box. Several elderly villagers go missing in succession, yet their families seem to have lost their memories and cannot say exactly when their loved ones disappeared. Suspecting his grandfather's death is connected to these strange events, Lin Feng begins investigating in secret, only to uncover a deliberately forgotten secret hidden in Lin Family Village. A hundred years ago, a family was massacred there, and the victims seem to be connected to the missing pages of the genealogy. Even more chillingly, in his grandfather's diary, Lin Feng finds a sentence: “They aren't looking for a person. They're looking for a ‘substitute.’” As his investigation deepens, Lin Feng realizes that he, too, is caught in a loop. On certain rainy days, he sees himself as he was ten years ago, and the village calendar sometimes runs backward...
