After I put the last stroke of cinnabar on the paper figure, the pen broke.
The paper man turned to look at me. The incense ashes on the threshold showed a row of uninhabited footprints.
My master died three years ago. But the bride outside the door called his name.
The night watchman handed over a business card, with a line of words seeping out from the back: "Your master is not your master."
Bronze medals, tickets, shadows, and the living dead thirty meters underground. At the wedding thirty years ago, all twelve members of the family disappeared, and only my master came out alive.
They said the well was not a well, but a mouth.
Lin Zhi, the descendant of the paper maker, was involved in a folk mystery that spanned thirty years. The night watchman, the scapegoat, the corpse raising ground, the Liu family in Hexi - what is more terrifying than ghosts are people.
Rules are used to protect people, not to sacrifice them. Breaking the cycle of cultivating gu requires more courage than following the rules.
