I Am the Paper Doll Offered as a Sacrifice

【A Slow-Burning, Carefully Savored Story | Fated by the Era | Entangled Feuds | A Devastating Aftermath】 In the twentieth year of the Republic, Meixi Town in Jiangnan suffers a hundred days of drought, leaving thousands of miles of barren land. To consolidate its power and reassure the people, the powerful Chen family revives a century-old evil sacrificial rite. Seven-year-old orphan Shen Yangzi is treated as a stand-in for the drought demon. Bound like a paper effigy, she is sunk into the deep well at the Temple of the Goddess as a sacrifice to pray for rain. Heaven sends life-giving rain, and the Chen family’s prestige reaches its height. The entire Shen family, however, is destroyed, its blood feud buried deep beneath the well. Eighteen years pass, and the storms of the era sweep through the town. Drought, war, occupation, flames of battle, upheaval, and regime changes... The fates of several great families become entwined, as love and hatred thrive alongside schemes. The Chen family’s eldest grandson, newly returned from studying abroad, seeks to split open the fog of ignorance; The Shen family’s elder brother, burdened by a blood feud, returns to his homeland as a spy; A gentle young woman struggling to survive between the cracks is tossed about by the ways of the world and the hearts of men. Everyone thinks they hold their futures in their hands, planning every step and controlling life and death. Only in the end do they realize that all people are merely helpless pawns on the chessboard of a chaotic age. What traps Meixi Town is not the wronged spirit in the well, but human greed, ignorance, and indifference: the bottomless well of the heart that never runs dry. The early chapters lay out the ensemble cast and the era; in the middle, grudges ferment and pull the characters in every direction; in the final act, the tragic song of a chaotic age erupts in a powerful climax. A slow-simmering story, the more you read, the more it hurts; savor it, and it will sink into your heart.