Shen Deng, a nineteen-year-old funeral worker, receives the first letter her master sent after his death.
It contains just one sentence: Don't take the funeral job in Wuhé Village.
But the village chief is already kneeling outside her door, holding a tiny coffin and begging her to ring the bell for the dead.
When the coffin lid opens, there's no corpse inside, only a paper effigy bearing her name.
From that day on, Shen Deng learns that the most frightening thing in this world isn't the dead refusing to leave. It's the living stealing lives by exploiting the rules of the dead.
