Deep in China’s Hengduan Mountains in the southwest, Suolong Village sits beneath the mist-shrouded Sanlong Ridge like a forgotten black mole. The villagers call themselves “Cursekeepers” and strictly observe their ancestral rules: seal the stele on the full moon, never mention red cords, and let outsiders stay no more than seven days. For a century, all outsiders who sought to uncover the village’s history either went mad and killed themselves or vanished without a trace. That is, until a downpour ten years ago washed out the mountain road, and ninety “refugees” disappeared all at once, leaving behind only twenty bloodstained photographs of the Cursekeepers.
Lin Shen, a city reporter investigating the cold case, enters the deadly mountain road known as “Ghost’s Bane” with Chen Mo, a photographer, and Su Wan, a folklorist who claims to be descended from the Su family. Old shoes beneath the rotting leaves, a hand bitten by a compass, a corpse arched backward over a cliff… Strange incidents weave a web around the three of them. When they finally reach Suolong Village, bloodworms seep from cracks in the soul-suppressing stele, unfamiliar portraits hang in the villagers’ homes, and Su Wan bears the same bluish birthmark on her lower back as the “Cursekeepers.” Together, these signs reveal a cruel truth: they are the sacrifices for this round of the “Great Sacrifice of Twenty Years.”
Fragments of the village records reveal the horrifying past: a hundred years ago, the villagers accidentally drilled into a vein of the Yellow Springs and awakened the ancient god “Mountain Spirit,” which feeds on fear. The so-called “curse suppression” is nothing but a lie, meant to fill the cracks in the earth’s veins with human souls. The Cursekeepers have borne the fate of sacrifice for generations. Su Wan’s mother and aunt both became sacrifices after resisting, while Lin Shen’s grandfather escaped the village but passed down the “curse-suppressing blood” to him. That is precisely why the Mountain Spirit chose him.
