There's a Little Ghost at the Bottom of the River, and He Calls Me Dad

Blurb One: The corpse retrievers of Cangjiang have one rule: never look back.

That day, I broke the rule and turned to look at the river. A child stood beneath the water, his face deathly pale as he smiled at me.

That night, he crouched beside my bed and timidly called me “Uncle.”

I didn’t think much of it until he told me, “You look like my dad.”

Only later did I learn that this little ghost was the corpse I had pulled from the river with my own hands three years earlier.

He called me Dad for three years. I forgot him for the rest of my life.

Blurb Two: For three generations, the Jing family has retrieved corpses. Every time we pull out a body, another black line appears on the left arm.

When the ninth line appears, the River God comes to claim us.

My great-grandfather died at the seventh line. My grandfather died at the eighth. My father died at the seventh.

Now it’s my turn, and I already have seven lines on my left arm.

Then I dug a copper coin out of a female corpse’s mouth. Four words were carved into it:

The Jing family repays its debt.

The thirty-eight lives my great-grandfather owed were all engraved on coins at the bottom of this river.

Those wronged souls have waited a hundred years. They’ve been waiting for me.

The day I repay the debt, I’ll have to give myself up, too.