When I opened my eyes, I returned to Nanluogu Alley in the cold winter of 1976.
In front of me is the mottled courtyard house, and in my ears are Jia Zhang's sharp scoldings.
I, He Yuzhu, the cook in the canteen of the steel rolling mill known as "Silly Zhu", after I died of an illness alone in 2025, I was reborn and returned to the starting point where all tragedies began.
When I was twenty years old, on a rainy night, my grandfather burst into the house covered in mud, gave me a rusty bronze mirror and fell unconscious.
That night, I saw in the mirror a woman wearing a phoenix crown and garland, smiling at me, and the birthmark on her palm suddenly became as hot as fire.
The next day, dogs in the entire village barked at my house.
But before he died, my grandfather grabbed my hand and dug his nails into my flesh: "Go to Xiangxi... To find..."
He died before he finished speaking, and I was the only one who heard his last silent word——
"Corpse".
