(A parallel world: In the early Republic era, warlords battle, the people suffer, and all manner of demons and spirits run rampant.)
In the early years of the Republic, the old and new worlds were colliding.
I studied physics at a provincial university. I believed in science and rejected superstition, dismissing talk of ghosts and gods as worthless nonsense.
An urgent telegram shattered everything:
My father had slipped into the water and died suddenly.
I hurried home day and night. The seventh day after his death was approaching, and dark clouds hung over the mountain village.
That night, my father appeared in my dream, drenched from head to toe, and kept shrieking the same words:
“On the seventh night, cut open the coffin! Destroy the corpse! Don’t let me become an evil spirit!”
I had dissected specimens and calculated mechanics, but I didn’t believe in messages from the dead.
Until the moment the coffin opened, when a chill ran through my entire body:
The marks on the corpse could not possibly have come from drowning.
The sinister aura inside the coffin was beyond any scientific explanation.
A century-old injustice, strange events in the mountain village, a family secret passed down through generations…
That was when I learned that the Lin family had never been a family of farmers and scholars. For generations, we had guarded against evil and watched over coffins.
All the strange stories I’d heard as a child were true.
But the truth became more terrifying as each layer was peeled away:
My Lin ancestors had not been heroes in that old injustice.
Should I preserve my family’s honor and keep the truth hidden, or overturn everything and reveal what really happened?
Holding the demon-slaying blade, I doubted for the first time what the science I had studied was truly meant to protect.
