Chen Yuan, a graduate student in folklore, takes a night-shift job at a folk-customs museum for a huge salary. Instead of an ordinary employee handbook, he receives a set of Night Shift Rules written in blood:
“At 1:11 a.m., if you hear a bell, no matter how many times it rings, face the north wall and answer, ‘Understood.’”
“If you see the shadows in the display cases writhing, do not look directly at them or investigate.”
“If the register prints a blank receipt, tear it up immediately and scatter the pieces outside the door.”
His numb, weary predecessor warns him: The rules are lessons written in blood. Follow them and you may live. Break them... and the consequences are on you.
Chen Yuan assumes this is just an absurd initiation test, until he experiences it for himself:
At midnight, the bell rings on schedule at three thirty-three, sounding a fourth time just for him.
In the empty exhibition hall, the clear sound of a child bouncing a ball rings out.
On the surveillance footage, the back of a woman in a qipao appears and then quietly vanishes.
The rules are coming true, one by one. Fear comes from imagining, to the extreme, the unknown consequences behind each prohibition.
When Chen Yuan tries to uncover the truth, he discovers that:
The museum's origins are entangled with a secret ritual from the Republican era, in which a living person was sacrificed to a bell.
Is the mysterious black cat named “Ink” the only one to warn him, or an ancient watcher?
And when he answered the fourth toll, it seems he pressed a bloody handprint onto an invisible contract...
The rules are starting to fail, and the seal is crumbling. As “it” awakens from within the laws, the only hope of survival may be to find the long-lost “key,” or become the next cornerstone of the seal.
The rhythm is tight and the story is exciting. Comments are welcome