Mystery Revival: Tales from the Republican Era

In 1937, warlords clashed and the land was strewn with starving corpses. Even more terrifying than the man-made calamities was the supernatural resurgence silently spreading across the land.

Lu Yan, a boy fleeing famine, found a blackened wooden carrying pole in a pile of corpses. It couldn’t carry grain; all it could carry were vicious ghosts.

“Only ghosts can fight ghosts.”

Lu Yan discovered that hanging vicious ghosts of comparable danger on either end of the pole created a strange balance in which they were temporarily neutralized. To stay alive, he was forced down a dead-end path, constantly searching for ghosts and piecing together a balance.

Along the way, he encountered Zhang Dong, an arrogant young man who could erase supernatural phenomena with a wave of his hand; Luo Wensong, still trying to figure out the rules for opening doors; and Luo Qian, digging in a graveyard. He witnessed Li Qingzhi seize a cleaver in a slaughterhouse of flesh and blood, and Meng Xiaodong tame the past in the Returning Soul Alley...

Lu Yan’s “Way of Balance” and Zhang Dong’s “Way of Erasure” were natural enemies. Zhang Dong’s erasure could disrupt the pole’s balance, instantly leaving Lu Yan facing the dead end of a ghostly resurgence. From their clashes as young men to their alliance in middle age to suppress the Ghost Lake and seal the Ghost Dream, the two men’s paths ran through the entire supernatural history of the Republic of China.

When the supernatural spiraled completely out of control, even Zhang Dong’s power of erasure reached its limits. Looking at his aging companions, Lu Yan made his final choice. He dismembered himself, hung his body from both ends of the pole, and walked into the dense gloom.