Investigating Folk Anomalies in Republican-Era China

Modern forensic pathologist Lin Qing sank into darkness after a bizarre explosion. When he woke, the taste of medicine still lingered in his throat, and he was lying on the hard plank bed of an old Republic-era house. He had become a sixteen-year-old boy with the same name, who had just breathed his last.

His death was suspicious, and his origins were a mystery. An order from the “Bureau of Folk Anomaly Investigations” was the only lifeline he had in this chaotic age.

His first case involved a wealthy merchant’s daughter combing her hair in front of a mirror, where a green fish swam. The moment anyone touched it, it vanished without a trace. It was a “haunting” level incident. The warning on the yellow talisman paper was still fresh: Do not stare for long. Do not touch carelessly. Above all, beware of “mirrors of the newly dead.”

With a forensic pathologist’s keen eye and logic, he saw through the illusions, but also brought danger upon himself. On the night of the full moon, every anomaly he had touched came back to life at once, following a faint “connection.” And at the center of their hungry gazes was him, a man who should not exist: someone who had “died” and come back to life.

More unexpectedly, among the boy’s belongings, he found a battered copy of The Maoshan Secrets.

From then on, with the precision of a scalpel in his left hand, he dissected the roots of strange phenomena; with a Five Thunder talisman in his right, he suppressed the ghosts roaming the night.

In this age of decline, where monsters ran rampant, he had to uncover why the original owner of this body had died, survive the deadly echoes that returned unfailingly with every full moon, and, amid the flood of a world thrown into disorder, carve out a bloody path to dawn for himself and the countless people behind him.