At three o'clock in the morning, ancient book restorer Su Yu answered the underwater phone.
The person who kept shouting "Sister, save me" was her childhood playmate who fell into the river for her fifteen years ago.
There is a death rule in the water towns in the south: if you don't consecrate the paper figures, you will see blood if you touch them.
Empty paper lanterns sink into the river to ward off disasters for the living; once the eyes are lit, the living person's real body will sink into the river to die.
Su Yu returned to town alone with the alarming copper bell.
The paper bride with her eyes open in the side room of the ancestral hall, the tung oil mixed with fresh human blood, and the nine life lamps in the red coffin are engraved with the birthday of the living person.
The ninth lamp was turned over, and there was a horoscope written on it that she had been writing for twenty-two years.
——Fifteen years ago, Aling sank into the river for her. Fifteen years later, it was still her who was wanted under the water.
Everyone in the town was trying to force her to get on the boat, but Shen Yan, the forensic doctor from the county bureau who smelled like medicine, kicked open the wooden door of the side room on a rainy night.
Shen Yan took the probe rod into the water to fish out the bones, and held the scalpel to cut away all the illusions.
He used the most rational medicine to dissect ghosts and gods, but locked her in his arms with the most paranoid possessiveness.
In front of the dark autopsy table, his long, cool fingers pinched her trembling chin, his eyes were scarlet, and he approached her lips almost madly:
"Eucalyptus, see clearly who I am."
"If those dead people in the river dare to rob you, I will drain the river; if you dare to die for them, I will carve your birth date on my bones with my own hands."
