The Yin-Yang Way, Cases of the Mortal Realm

In the locust grove, a woman in a wedding dress hung from a tree, a locust leaf in her mouth. In the middle of the pond, the embroidered shoes on a floating corpse were the kind made by paper effigy shops for the dead. At midnight, the lights on the opera stage went out and came back on. A new “person” in costume had appeared onstage. The elders of Qingchuan Town said it was a haunting, a vengeful spirit claiming lives. Wen Sui said it was murder, with the living pretending to be ghosts. She was heir to the yin-yang tradition, but never believed in ghosts or gods. She knew all the folk customs, feng shui taboos, and exorcism rituals, but she didn't use that knowledge to “catch ghosts.” She used it to expose crimes disguised as folk traditions. Forensic doctor Lin Xiaoman once scoffed: “You’re a charlatan. How could you be more accurate than DNA?” Until Wen Sui found the killer's name in the way a paper effigy was folded, read a victim's identity in the stitches of an embroidered shoe, and solved the truth behind a series of murders from an inscription on a bronze mirror. They went from opposing each other to entrusting their lives to one another. Because they gradually discovered that behind those supposed “hauntings” was a cult of sorcerers called the Xuanming Society, using folk customs as a cover and fear as a weapon. And the leader of this group was the real culprit who had killed Wen Sui's grandmother five years ago. “I don't believe in ghosts or gods, but I believe there are things in this world more terrifying than ghosts.” “Like the human heart. Like people who take lives under the pretense of hunting ghosts.”