Scribe of the Underworld Pact

My name is Chen Yan, and I'm an antiques restorer specializing in the "yin objects" no one else dares touch.

A ghost-marriage betrothal letter, a soul-sealing opera script, a bloodstained land deed, a paper bride's marriage contract... These scraps of paper and old documents, steeped in the resentment of the dead and hiding century-old unsolved cases, are all my restoration work.

Before my master disappeared, he told me: Every dark contract must be fulfilled. Its hold lasts a hundred years, and blood debts must be repaid.

I didn't believe him until I touched a ghost-marriage betrothal letter for the first time. I saw a bride from decades ago being sacrificed alive, and a bone-deep chill ran through my fingertips. That's when I realized my master had been telling the truth.

Through damaged contracts, I can trace the lingering echoes of dark thoughts and witness truths long buried. But every time I do, those thoughts eat away at my body and my temperature keeps falling. If it drops below freezing, I'll become the next supernatural horror.

Worse still, a curse passed down through the Chen family means I won't live past thirty. I have only two years left.

To find my missing master, break the bloodline curse, and stay alive, I take up my restoration knife. Using scraps of paper as my medium and ink and brush as my blade, I restore one folk-horror case after another, each buried by time.

The bride sacrificed in a ghost marriage, the wronged opera singer on the stage, the paper-figure-making family wiped out to the last member, the century-old blood debt unearthed by relocating a grave...

I rewrite dark contracts, dispel resentment, and destroy evil spirits. Step by step, I uncover a conspiracy spanning a hundred years and confront the dark forces stirring up both the world of the living and the world of the dead.

Someone once asked me, "Aren't you scared, dealing with the dead every day?"

I smiled.

The ghost in a living person's heart is far more frightening than the dead.

From now on, I'll be the one to write the rules governing both worlds.