Other people travel for fun. Yu Huiming travels for her life.
She only meant to go with her best friend to take in the autumn colors at a famous rural village. Instead, she found that the whole village was full of “method actors”: the tour guide’s smile was stiffer than a ghost’s, the locust tree at the entrance was redder than her lipstick, and the rules at night were thicker than a calculus textbook. And the beauty mark beneath her right eye that always seemed to be “dancing,” along with the Xianfeng Tongbao coin in her pocket that kept “running a fever,” seemed to be desperately trying to tell her: Hey, you’ve wandered onto the wrong set. This isn’t a farmhouse retreat, it’s an “inn” for the dead.
When her amateur skills provoked the thing and the situation spiraled out of control, a handsome man in white appeared out of nowhere, carrying a vintage lantern and looking too good to be alive. His name was Shen Que, and he spoke like a seasoned mystic: “You have a special constitution. You’d make an excellent… uh, business partner.”
And so Yu Huiming, a materialist who studied history, teamed up with Shen Que, who treated “scientific ghostbusting” as part of his daily routine. They became the most ridiculous temporary-worker duo in history: one attacked evil spirits with her tears, while the other purified the surroundings with his good looks.
When the old locust tree at the village entrance began dancing the “grab-the-victim dance,” Yu Huiming finally understood: when Grandma said she could “see things other people can’t,” she didn’t mean she had artistic potential. She meant… she might have to get a license and become the heroine of a horror movie for good.
Now she clutches an evil-repelling copper coin in her left hand (which sometimes fails) and holds on to her aloof, sharp-tongued partner with her right (who’s reliably dependable). Her only thought is: Has this generation of evil spirits set their KPIs too high? And is it still too late to ask for a refund?
Note: Everything in this novel is fictional. It’s all made up!
