People say that those who commit suicide by jumping into the river are the most resentful. The current will wash away their souls day and night, leaving them with no peace forever.
My name is Chen Shan, and I am a river worker, but I don't fish. My family's business, which has been passed down for four generations, is to collect corpses.
The rules in this industry are overwhelming because we live on the boundary between yin and yang. My grandfather and father sacrificed their lives for a few iron rules, which I have engraved on my bones. Among them, the most evil one and the most unacceptable one is:
Among the floating corpses in the river, the only ones that stand upright in the water with their backs against the water and their faces facing the sky - what we call "standing water corpses" must not be fished out.
That's not a dead person, it's an evil spirit in the water that has borrowed a human skin to establish its power and is looking for a substitute.
But that day, facing an old couple in the city who were crying and begging me to find their daughter and let her "bury her in peace", I looked at the young and miserable "corpse standing in the water" in the center of the river, and my heart softened.
It was with this thought that I stretched out the bamboo pole and committed a taboo that would never allow me to stand up again.
Now, it's targeting me.
