Funeral Records: I Use Paper Effigies to Subdue the Underworld

My mother has uremia, and each dialysis session costs 600 yuan. My funeral shop brings in an average of 8,000 yuan a month, with less than 3,000 yuan in net profit.

Then one day, beneath a dead person’s pillow, I found a fingernail that was still growing. It had sprouted from the corpse’s flesh, streaked with blood, and icy to the touch.

That was when I learned ghosts really do exist. And they all follow “rules.”

Talismans must be drawn with red cinnabar from Chenzhou. One wrong stroke, and the talisman fails and the person dies.

When using rice to summon spirits, you may only question a bound earth spirit. If you don’t send it away afterward, it’ll follow you home.

Enter the underworld at the Hour of the Rat and leave at the Hour of the Rabbit. Be one minute late, and your paper double will open its eyes.

I’m no Taoist priest. I’m just a craftsman who runs a funeral shop.

But ever since my right eye gained the ability to see the qi surrounding those “things,” every suspicious funeral in the county has come knocking at my door.

Corpse fingernails, a hanging in a red dress, a bowl of standing water, a haunted house ward, a life-borrower...

Behind every “supernatural” incident lurks a human heart buried alive.

[Reader advisory] This book is inspired by real folk customs. Please do not imitate any of the rituals.