The Ghost-Catching Celestial Master

There are three ironclad rules in our line of work: First, never kill a being with a soul. Second, never eat the flesh of a vengeful spirit’s victim. Third, never enter a village with a new grave.

In the winter of 1990, my father broke all three rules and fled to a village called Liujiazui.

A butcher who had been possessed by a pig’s vengeful spirit had just died there. On the night his corpse transformed, his grave was found empty, and monsters began roaming the village.

Everyone thought the thing had escaped. Only my father knew it was waiting beneath the village, waiting for the night of the full moon, waiting to take everyone in the village down with it.

That day, he looked up at the sky and said grimly, “It’s tonight.”