"Intangible Cultural Heritage Night Watch: Repairing Ancient Souls" is a novel that combines the Cthulhuization of traditional culture, rules-based ghost stories, and the healing style of unit dramas. With the core setting of "all things have spirits, and spirits are sick", it constructs a world view in which handicrafts have been lost due to modern industrialization, and old objects that carry the obsessions of the ancients have turned into "weird objects." As a night watchman of intangible cultural heritage, the protagonist is not a traditional slayer, but a "surgeon" who "cures" monsters by repairing artifacts and filling regrets. He enters the memory copy of cultural artifacts through the "Tiangong Kaiwu System" and follows the folk rules of the times to complete puzzle repairs. In the process of resolving the obsession with monsters, he protects traditional culture and fights against the "forgetting crisis" of human civilization.
The novel adopts a structure of unit drama and main plot advancement. It starts with the protagonist guarding the old street museum against demolition and the resurgence of strange objects, and gradually unfolds the game of rules of cultural relic restoration competition, the restoration and return of national treasures lost overseas, and finally moves towards the ultimate mission of repairing the memory gap of human civilization. It not only shows the charm of intangible cultural heritage skills such as Su embroidery and shadow puppetry, but also incorporates highlights such as wits, folk customs, and the collision of Chinese and foreign cultures. In the atmosphere of thrilling ghost stories, it has both the emotional core of healing and the deep concept of inheriting traditional culture.
