On the Seventh Night After Grandpa's Death, a Paper Effigy Bowed to Me

On the seventh night after Grandpa's death, I was keeping vigil past midnight when the pair of paper figures on the altar suddenly moved. The paper boy knelt and kowtowed to me. "Young Master, you're back."

My name is Shen Qing. I dropped out of art school and came back to take over the old town's last paper-offering shop. I thought it was just a way to make a living, until I discovered that the paper figures I made could shield the living from calamity; the paper chains I made could bind the breath that had lingered in the Yellow River for ten years; and the paper horses I made could travel to the underworld, find the way, and carry people's unfinished words to those who needed to hear them.

The whole city calls me the Living King of Hell of Funeral Street. Only I know that before Grandpa passed, he left a sentence unfinished. In the main room, four words emerged from the ashes of a paper horse that had burned for thirty years: Don't take work from the Chen family.

[New novel, please add to your collection] The smiling paper figure: turn back if you see it