People in the world often say that Yin and Yang are separated by life and death, by the River of Forgetfulness, and by the physical body that can never be put back together after one breath. But Wei Yi knew that was not the case - what really separated Yin and Yang was never distance, but "the inability to let go".
I can't let go of the words I haven't finished speaking, the justice I haven't demanded, and the people I haven't had time to say goodbye to.
So he recognized talismans and seals at the age of three, was a psychic at the age of five, squatted on the back hill grave to eat melon seeds from wild ghosts at the age of eight, and lay on the cement floor in Hengdian wearing a three-layer prison uniform to pretend to be dead at the age of 20. He always carried half a pack of spicy strips and a stack of talismans cut from A4 paper in his pocket. Others asked him why he didn't use yellow talisman paper. He said that he could draw talisman on A4 paper for 50 cents each, and with the remaining money, he could buy two more packs of spicy strips - poverty is not a choice, it is survival. But as poor as he is poor, he never saves the offerings to ghosts, because the living have tomorrow, and the dead only have today.
He helped the girl who was pushed off the rooftop to send her distress diary into the sunshine, helped the female ghost who was allergic to anesthesia to dig out the medical records covered with correction fluid from the mezzanine of the morgue, and helped the little girl who had been abducted for twenty years return the iron whistle that had sunk at the bottom of the well to her mother's grave. Every time he did these things, he would lose part of his memory - first he couldn't remember the faces of his high school classmates, then his mother's voice became farther and farther away, and then his own name was swirling on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't call it out. Like a candle, it lights the way for the dead souls to return, but it burns away bit by bit the evidence of being a "human being".
Someone asked him what he was planning. He said he didn't mean anything. The person who asked laughed and said why are you still doing it if you don't have any purpose?
