My name is Erhai, though my full name is Li Zhengyang.
In 1990, I was born in a remote mountain village in the north.
There was a sinister place in the village that the elders called the “Pit of Ten Thousand Souls.” They said it was the burial place of ten thousand wronged spirits, and no one was allowed near it.
I didn’t believe in that stuff, so at midnight I sneaked over to challenge it.
My childhood friend died, and I too embarked on a road with no return.
From then on, my life changed.
I could see things the living couldn’t.
An old woman in the village who had mastered the Dao said I was born to follow the Daoist path. She took me as her apprentice and taught me talismans, hand seals, and ritual steps.
She said a great evil lay in the Pit of Ten Thousand Souls, sealed away twenty-three years ago by her husband at the cost of his life.
Now the seal was weakening, and the thing was stirring.
I asked her what we should do.
She said, “Either capture it, or get as far away from this trouble as you can.”
