Chronicles of Wangchuan City

Wangchuan City has three iron laws:

The living cannot leave, the dead do not decay, and once the faceless statue in the City God's temple calls out a name, someone will die within three days.

Shen Du, an eighteen-year-old corpse collector, has to check his arms every morning when he wakes.

They are covered in warnings he carved into his own skin.

Some have scabbed over, while others look as if they were carved only moments ago.

He can't remember what happened the night before, why he can always see fragments of people's final moments, or even the people he once fought desperately to save.

That is, until he and his master bring back an unidentified corpse.

Its left little finger is missing half a joint. It is still warm after death, and as they prepare it for burial, its hand closes around Shen Du's pulse.

On the brink of death, Shen Du sees a well.

The reflection at the bottom is smiling.

Its little finger is missing half a joint, too.

From that day on, paper figures open their eyes, opera songs echo from the bottom of wells, coffins circle the city, and the names of the living begin disappearing from their doorplates.

Shen Du gradually realizes that Wangchuan City isn't haunted.

The city itself is slowly forgetting the living.

And every person he saves costs him a memory.

To uncover the old case behind the unidentified corpse, Shen Du can only carve clues into his own flesh and race toward the truth before he forgets everything.

But every missing little finger, every name that cannot be spoken, and every warning carved into his arms points to a name he doesn't dare remember: Shen Du.