My name is Fan Linyuan. I spent twenty-five years as an overworked wage slave, with no car or home. My dad ran off when I was seven, and my mom raised my sister and me on her own. At 4:44 one morning, I was jolted awake by a strange sound. I went outside and yelled, and then...
They told me I was the new-generation Guide, and my job was to grant the dreams of those who died unjustly.
At other people’s funerals, they burn paper money. At mine, they burn years of my life. When the wooden fish drum sounds, the task begins; when the token appears, a life story unfolds; when the bronze chime rings, the dream begins. Want to transmigrate into the life of a domineering CEO? Done. Want to be reborn and cultivate immortality? Done. Want to return to the past and become the richest man alive? Done. I craft the most dignified dreams for them, so they can spend their remaining years in those dreams, let go of their obsessions, and pass on with dignity.
I thought this was just the ordinary life of a properly employed civil servant in the Underworld. Then my guardian told me that the souls of my forty-seven generations of ancestors were hanging inside a well, and my dad had gone into that well too. Now I was the only one left to join them.
This is a Chinese-style funeral a thousand years in the making. It buries the obsessions of those who died unjustly, the Guide’s lifespan, and the road my dad had been walking without looking back for eighteen years. I thought I had to put this funeral to rest to save my mom, my sister, my love, and everyone else, including myself. Then I would kill my dad. But is that really how things are going to unfold...
