My name is Chen Jiusheng, and I was born when the blood moon illuminated the three-hundred-year-old locust tree in Qingwu Village like a bleeding ghost. The spot as big as a copper coin on the sole of my right foot was the ghost-faced totem; my cry was like a broken bellows pumping air, and I was so startled that the midwife dropped her scissors on the ground. Grandpa used a mahogany sword to chop away the white air in the old locust tree, but was dragged into the ground by the pale ghost hands emerging from the roots of the tree. Before he died, he shouted that I should marry the ghost wife of the unmarked tomb in the back mountain to save his life. That night, the female ghost in red in the blood moon said in my ear that she wanted to be my wife, and a red string with black nails appeared on her chest out of thin air. The spate of strange murders in the village, the black bloodstains under the old locust tree that couldn't be wiped away and made grimaces appear... From the moment I was born, I have been haunted by ghosts. My life is a terrifying dream that started in the blood moon.
