[Chinese Folk Customs] [Rule-Based Suspense] [Urban Mysteries] [Case-of-the-Week Investigations] [Ensemble Cast] [No System] [Abilities Come at a Cost] [The Protagonist Breaks Through by Exploiting the Rules]
This is not the familiar "see the rules and try to survive" story. Instead, it investigates why old customs have gone out of control, who has been placed in the vacant positions, and how the rules can be used to help those involved find a way out. Lu Chenzhou's special ability is "substitution": as long as an old custom has a genuine vacancy, he can temporarily fill that role by meeting its duties, taboos, and conditions for recognition.
Recommended Blurb
[Chinese Folk Customs] [Rule-Based Suspense] [Urban Mysteries] [Case-of-the-Week Investigations] [Ensemble Cast]
Lu Chenzhou, a local gazetteer proofreader, saw his own name in a funeral procession register from twenty-seven years ago.
That night, white funeral banners lined Qinghuai Alley, and everyone in the street was waiting for his funeral procession.
There was no corpse in the coffin, and no dead person among the mourners.
There was only an empty spot for the flag bearer, waiting for him to take it himself.
In this world, old customs are not superstition. They are protocols written by the ancients to contain anomalies.
When the night watchman is absent, the whole street will pick someone to call out the hours in his place;
when a bride has no name, the wedding banquet will force every guest to accept the marriage on her behalf;
when a living person is entered into the register of the dead, reality will gradually erase every trace that she ever lived.
And Lu Chenzhou's ability is "substitution": as long as a place is truly vacant in the protocol, he can temporarily fill it.
The price is that every time he takes a place, the identities that do not belong to him will cling to him through it.
When others encounter an old custom, they only want to run.
Lu Chenzhou only asks three questions:
Who made the rules?
Who filled the vacant place with someone?
This position
