He is Huai'an Town's most mysterious paper effigy maker, and also the King of the Underworld, whose soul has been scattered and sealed inside a mirror.
She is a bold young detective recently returned from overseas, and also a mirror spirit who burned her father to death, slew a god, and bears a blood pact.
To solve the mystery of her father's bizarre death, Qing Jiujiu sets her sights on Song Zhiyuan, the pale, handsome proprietor of Wangchuan Pavilion. She thinks he is the key to the murder, unaware that she is the heart of the game. The ancestral mirror she carries houses his soul, and reflects her own doom.
A paper body, a life of seven days. The Mirror of Truth, sealed by a blood pact.
When the mastermind finally reveals himself with a cruel grin and overturns the board, she is left with only two choices: die so that he and her father can live, or let him burn away his soul so that she can live forever in solitude.
“Song Qiwu, your three-hundred-year debt is paid.”
“This life's debt, I'll repay in the next.”
Amid the ruins on a rainy night, she burns away her father's remaining soul and offers herself as the sacrifice. He forgets everything, yet instinctively walks toward her and softly asks:
“Have we... met somewhere before?”
[A reader's guide]
· A devastating romance: He willingly remains imprisoned in the mirror forever, while she burns away the soul of her beloved father.
· Folk-horror mystery: paper effigies brought to life with painted eyes, a seven-day ritual of transformation, and the King of the Underworld's blood.
· Mutual salvation: She is the moon reflected in his mirror, and he is the one who lights her way.
The lights of Wangchuan Pavilion glow once more. A new story begins with the words, “Come home with me.”
