Eerie Revival: Answering the Folk Hotline

[Genre: Urban Mystery] + [Theme: Folk-Horror Tales] + [Character Archetype: Mastermind Behind the Scenes] + [Style: Gripping Mystery] + [Twist: The Most Laid-Back Department Is Actually the Front Line in Saving the World]

Reborn, Fang Zheng chooses an obscure, retirement-like job at the Center for the Preservation of Folk Culture to escape the grisly fate he suffered in his previous life. He becomes its sole hotline operator.

He expects to spend his days drinking tea and reading the newspaper, until a bizarre call comes in:

“Hello, my son went into the closet to play hide-and-seek, and now we can’t find him...”

Fang Zheng opens a mysterious ancient book and replies without the slightest change in tone: “After midnight, don’t call his name while facing the closet. Whatever answers you might not be your son. Seal the closet door with an inked carpenter’s line immediately, or your whole family will be ‘caught’ and dragged inside.”

“Master! Our village prayed for rain and invited the Dragon King, but now villagers keep drowning in their own water jars!”

Fang Zheng says, “What you invited isn’t a god, but a ‘chang.’ The offering was wrong, and now it wants a living sacrifice. Find the body of the first person who drowned. That’s the heart of the formation, and the key to breaking it!”

As one call for help after another turns into a final message, Fang Zheng realizes that the taboos of this world are coming back in full force.

And he is the only hotline connecting the human world to despair, the unseen figure from urban legends whose every word decides life or death: “Mr. Taboo.”