The Silent River

In 2018, developers dredging the so-called Man-Eating Pond in Yahe Village unearthed seven skeletons. The most recent belonged to Chen Xiangming, a cognitively impaired woman who had supposedly drowned herself in 1991. Historian He Xi is commissioned to investigate and discovers a secret ledger, passed down among the He, Chen, Liu, Wang, Zhao, and Sun families for a century. It records the village's collective crimes since the 1923 Water Ghost Case: struggles over resources, cannibalism during famine, persecution of educated young people sent to the countryside, and finally the systematic abuse and murder of Chen Xiangming. To He Xi's horror, she discovers that she is Chen Xiangming's posthumous child, adopted by the He family, the masterminds behind the crimes.

The investigation is like tearing open the scabbed-over skin of the village. As capital moves in, the internet brings the truth to light, and a new generation awakens, the century-old pact of silence begins to crumble. He Xi stands at the crossroads of blood ties, affection for her home, and the truth: should she take up the secret ledger and become the next keeper of its secrets, letting the river remain silent, or expose every crime and bear the cost of bringing her homeland crashing down? This river, silenced for a hundred years, awaits an earth-shattering echo.