My Traditional Craft Stunned the Nation

[Rules Horror + Intangible Cultural Heritage + State Power + Mild Horror]

Lu Zhou inherits a box of dusty shadow puppets left behind by his grandfather. Carved into the box are a few small words:

“At midnight, perform a play on a stage where no one can see you. If there are guests below, do not stop, do not ask questions, and do not look back.”

He assumes it’s just a folk superstition, until the first night, when he performs Zhong Kui Marries Off His Sister to the empty air.

The shadow puppets begin to move across the screen, as if ghosts have really entered them.

Even stranger, from a long bench beneath the stage, empty of people, comes a faint, barely audible...

“Here’s your tip.”

A Kangxi Tongbao coin engraved with the words “Fengdu” lands at his feet.

The next day, people from the Cultural Relics Bureau show up at his door. “Comrade, where did you get the coin you’re holding?”

Before Lu Zhou can think of an explanation, they take him overnight to a mysterious compound.

There, he meets a storyteller who can “talk” evil spirits to death and an embroiderer who can “seal” malevolent entities with her needlework.

The person in charge hands him an official document stamped in red:

“Comrade Lu Zhou, welcome to the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Emergency Protection and Anomaly Response Office. From today on, use your shadow puppet plays to perform a ‘farewell to the immortals’ for those unclean things.”

While supernatural beings abroad struggle to survive with the help of gene-modifying drugs,

Lu Zhou is singing to a thousand-year-old corpse demon:

“This is no place for guests to stay. I’ll see you across the River of Forgetfulness, sir, ”

After hearing the song, the old corpse demon wipes away its tears and stuffs all its burial bronzes into Lu Zhou’s hands as a tip.