Yin Debt, Yang Redemption

On the day Jiang Wantong was born, a tuft of white hair crowned her head. The midwife counted on her fingers, then turned deathly pale. “A lone, widowed star has come to bring mourning. If you keep this girl, someone in your family will die every three years!” Before she could finish speaking, a bolt of heavenly lightning struck down the Qilin Temple in Tanfeng Village, where people prayed for children. When she was six, her own grandmother pressed her bloody handprint onto a deed and sold her outright to a mysterious pawnshop. Granny Yu, the pawnshop’s keeper, took her in and taught her to draw talismans and make paper offerings. She also told her that every three years, her life would depend on the “Seventh Lord” in the black coffin in the main hall. On her eighteenth birthday, the curse came due. Granny Yu died a horrible death, and three demonic sedan chairs blocked the road outside the pawnshop. The Fox Lord inside a green sedan reached out to her. “Xiaojiu, I’ve come to take you home.” But she turned away and climbed into the grand red bridal sedan that had never once been moved. The curtains fell. They carried her back to the pawnshop, and into a fate from which there was no escape. The man in the black coffin held the pawn ticket from all those years ago, his slit pupils narrowing. “Your wings have grown strong. Think you can run?” Only later did she learn that this pawnshop had never dealt in the business of the living. A yin pawn must be accepted, no matter what is asked for. A wronged schoolgirl from a century ago, the secrets hidden in a coffin shop, resentful spirits that would not leave the Xijiang River… One by one, these “yin pawns” came knocking. And every time she helped a dead soul fulfill an obsession, one of the talismans on the black coffin in the main hall faded away. Then, one night, as torrential rain swelled the river, his icy fingers traced the pale golden birthmark appearing on her back. His voice trembled. “Little fire fox… Who did this to you all those years ago?”