Corpse Driving in Western Hunan: Corpse Laughter

[Horror, Suspense, Supernatural, Xiangxi Corpse-Driving, Folk Customs, Chills, Twists, Heartbreak]

A short video of corpse-driving in Xiangxi takes the internet by storm, with the pink female zombie dubbed “the most beautiful female zombie” and “marry me” flooding the comments. Ji Xun, a folklore lecturer, wears an ancestral coin said to ward off evil spirits. Suddenly, a voice message arrives on his phone from his close friend Chen Zhibai, who has been missing for three years: “Ji... Xun... save... me...” Yet Chen Zhibai's corpse was found just two days ago, beneath a cliff along the ancient corpse-driving trail in Laosi City.

Ji Xun rushes to Xiangxi that night. On the train, he meets the corpse driver Qin Jiuweng, who tells him that Chen Zhibai has been afflicted by the “Corpse-Grin Gu,” a curse laid by Peng Shiqi, a Ming dynasty Tusi king. Those afflicted wear a smile that is neither a laugh nor a cry, and have their brains scooped out. At a century-old corpse inn outside Laosi City, the mute girl A Bing wears a pink ribbon around her wrist, just like the pink female zombie. The guests begin dying one after another, and A Bing writes a countdown on the wall. Qin Jiuweng says, “Within seven days, everyone here will die.”

The pink female zombie is dead, smiling, with her brain scooped out. She was the first sacrifice, awakening the corpse mother who had slept for three hundred years. Ji Xun must enter the underground palace and use the warding coin to end it all. And the mute girl A Bing has been waiting for three hundred years.