Night Curfew in the Mountain Village

After his father disappears, Lin Shu receives a letter from his hometown and is forced to return to the mountain village he hasn’t visited in years. It’s nothing like he remembers. At dusk, the whole village rings a bell, and every door is shut at sunset; white paper lanterns hang outside every home, and no one is allowed to light three lamps indoors; at night, you must not look in a mirror, answer a soul-calling voice outside the window, or count the footsteps in the courtyard. The villagers say one thing to him more than anything else: “After dark, no matter who knocks, don’t open the door.” On the first night, Lin Shu hears a woman’s gentle, hoarse voice outside the door. It’s a voice he could never forget. It belongs to his mother, who died ten years ago. On the second night, a trail of wet footprints appears outside, stretching from the courtyard gate to the foot of his bed. On the third night, his name appears on an ancestral tablet in the village shrine. And every seven days, someone in the village goes missing. To stay alive and uncover the truth behind his father’s disappearance and his mother’s death, Lin Shu has no choice but to follow the village rules as they grow ever more bizarre, while digging into the secrets buried there for decades. But as the truth gradually comes to light, he discovers that the most terrifying thing in the village at night may not be outside the door. It may have been among the villagers all along.