Paper Effigy Maker: From the Start, I Open the Paper Doll’s Eyes

My name is Chen Jiu. The day I was born, I was stillborn. To save me, my grandfather broke a grave taboo of our founding master: he used century-old yin paper to craft me a heart and borrowed years from the dead, bringing me back to life. On the day I entered the trade, he laid down three ironclad rules: Never paint eyes on a paper effigy and leave out the pupils. Never let a paper horse’s hooves touch the ground. And never make a paper effigy of someone who turns around at midnight!

I obeyed those rules for eighteen years, until one night, a warlord held a gun to my head and forced me to craft burial effigies for his concubine, who had died a gruesome death while pregnant. Then he demanded that I… paint pupils on the paper effigy!

…

That night, the effigy opened its eyes, and a crimson corpse rose from the dead. Forced to break the rules, I unexpectedly awakened the legacy of the Heavenly Paper-Crafting Scripture. From then on, I cut paper into soldiers and turned paper into dragons! At the bottom of the Yellow River, I crafted a “Waterproof Armor” and slew a thousand-year-old giant softshell turtle! In a Miao village in western Hunan, I cut out the “Star Official Angri” and pecked through countless venomous insects! At the summit of Changbai Mountain, I gathered the incense offerings of ten thousand households and crafted the “Great Wall of Ten Thousand Miles,” suppressing the wicked dragon that threatened the nation’s destiny! Beneath the Forbidden City, I made my own body into paper, attained sainthood in the flesh, and forced the Yin Emperor to his knees, begging for mercy! A person lives for a single breath; even the Buddha fights for a stick of incense. I am Chen Jiu, the only Heavenly Paper-Crafting Master between the worlds of yin and yang…