The Craftsman of Cuoqiao: I Use Mortise and Tenon to Conquer the Covered Bridge Hauntings

As the sole inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of timber arch bridges, Zhu Junqi takes over her ancestral home after her grandfather goes missing. She never imagined that a “murderous” ancient bridge was hidden in the weeds behind the house. The inscription on its stele lays down a deadly rule: “Do not step on the bridge’s center seam at midnight.”

When she investigates the bridge in the dead of night, she accidentally breaks the rule and falls into a bizarre bridge realm. The ghostly figures of ancient craftsmen surround her, and a bone-chilling cold eats into her body. But her ancestral ink marker suddenly shoots out a blood-red line. Using the traditional technique of marking lines for mortise-and-tenon joints, she discovers she can drive away ghosts! Her grandfather’s apparition appears in the mist and leaves her with just three words: “Repair the bridge. Find me.”

Only then does she learn that every ancient bridge in an old residence is a rules-based horror dungeon, and flaws in the bridge itself are the source of its rules. The way to break them turns out to be the “old crafts” that the world has scorned:

Use through-tenons and mortises to mend broken timber and break out of spatial loops;

Use mineral pigments to fill in cracks and dispel illusions;

Join dougong brackets to build a barrier and stand firm against the commercial developers bent on destroying the heritage!

The Luban ruler foretells fortune and misfortune, while the construction journal conceals secrets. Her grandfather’s disappearance and the developers’ frenzied attempts to seize the bridges all point to the “arch heartwood” of her ancestral bridge. It is the ultimate key to passing down the timber arch tradition, and the origin of every rule.

When intangible heritage crafts collide with deadly rules, Zhu Junqi takes up her ink marker and grips the Luban ruler. “If our ancestors’ mortise-and-tenon joints can withstand a hundred years of mountain floods, why can’t they beat your crooked tricks?” Repairing bridges and protecting heritage, hunting down the culprit and finding her grandfather, she wields nothing but a chisel and an ink line to carve her way through the haunted bridge tales, turning traditional crafts into the ultimate weapons against the supernatural!