Seventeen-year-old Shen Gui is a fool. He squats at the entrance of the village and counts ants every day. Everyone in the village said so.
But they didn't know that he could see things that others couldn't see - gray figures, the white silk around the neck of the hanged man, and the black blood seeping from the roots of the old locust tree.
People in the village avoided him and called him "the fool who guards the village." Until Shen Fugui died, until the children in the village were possessed, until the outsider named Chen Mo dug up the bones under the old locust tree.
Only then did Shen Gui realize that what he was guarding was not a village, but a living tomb four hundred years ago. What he learned was not magic, but digging his own grave. The black spots in his eyes were not birthmarks, but a door. Behind the door were thirteen evil kings, waiting for him to open it with his own hands.
And the village guard who adopted him sacrificed his life not to let him live, but to let him die slower.
——Do you think you are guarding the village? The village is guarding you. Do you think you are the village guard? You are the sacrifice.
