On the third night of keeping vigil after his grandfather's death, Lin Du saw the sign for the “Karmic Pawnshop” at the end of the old street suddenly light up. Bloody rules crawled across the walls. A child in a burial robe handed him half a copper coin and said his grandfather owed him three things: a red dress, glutinous rice, and a bride. Lin Du was forced to fulfill the debt, only to find that each task brought an even deeper debt and something more terrifying: crawling shadows, a threshold that wrote, a lost bridal sedan, and the words “Missing Pages of the Book of a Hundred Calamities” appearing on a blank tombstone. Shen Zhao, a graduate student in folklore, arrived with the case of a fire from ten years ago and revealed that the rules weren't ordained by fate. Someone had altered them and made them binding with a seal. In the cellar accounting room, the keeper of the ledger sat waiting. The Book of a Hundred Calamities recorded the shadow and memories Lin Du had pawned, and one instance after another followed. He had to redeem himself within seven days, or he would become the pawnshop's “property” forever.
