Linshui Town has a river of black water, and on its banks stands an old ferry crossing called Third Watch Ferry.
For generations, the townsfolk have passed down a saying: At the first watch, the ferry carries the living; at the second, returning souls. When the bell rings at the third watch, the River God comes to call the names.
Twenty years ago, a so-called “River God’s wedding” took seven women. After the sacrificial boat vanished into the mist, they never returned. All that was left behind was a dripping-wet embroidered shoe. Twenty years later, the bronze bell at Third Watch Ferry rings again. River lanterns drift upstream, and a corpse in a wedding dress surfaces, with the name of a living person written on its lantern.
Shen Zhaoshui, an undertaker’s assistant who examines corpses, doesn’t believe in ghosts or gods. He believes only that bones can speak.
Liu Wenxi, a policewoman from the provincial capital, has come in search of her missing sister. Yet she is the first person the River God names.
A corpse beneath a river lantern, a paper bride, a bleeding statue, a ghost ship crossing by night…
Every strange case points back to the sacrificial boat that never sank twenty years ago.
The so-called River God was never a god.
It was the evil hidden deep in the human heart, the kind that cannot bear the light.
