The Exquisite Brothel

Warning: This novel is a magical-realist social drama that uses the supernatural to expose how people are dehumanized by today's warped exam-driven education system. It contains biting satire and sharp criticism, which may be controversial or upsetting. Please read with care.

“The harm caused by the eight-legged essay was equal to that of burning books, and its destruction of talent was worse than the slaughter outside Xianyang.” Fan Jin, from The Scholars, had his flesh, blood, and soul drained by the imperial examinations in life. In death, his resentment became an undying curse that engulfed the entire city of Shengjiao. A thousand years of rancor still lingered, ensnaring generation after generation in the city. Driven by the delusion of earning a place on the honor roll, countless families forced their children to sacrifice everything: health, friends and family, life, and morality, all worthless here.

The most rigidly disciplined school in Shengjiao, Aryan High School, was a blood-soaked cathedral to the worship of grades. It colluded with Director Zheng of the Education Bureau. Trapped in an airtight cage of pressure, students either died from overwork or plunged from rooftops in despair, their young lives submerged in a boundless sea of misery.

Education gives civilization wings, yet it also makes every step a perilous one.

Still, there are always torchbearers, guardians of civilization's tomb, who cannot bear to watch the young turn to smoke and dust. They set in motion the closely guarded “Death Knell Project,” using their own flesh and blood as fuel to raise a faltering torch against this man-eating cage and the skeletons' beguiling whispers...