New book! New book! The rating will gradually climb, so give the first twenty chapters a try. If you don't like it, the author will never find a partner in this lifetime!
My name is Chen Beixuan, and I run a small clinic in Yongning Alley, a county town.
The storefront is rented. It has gray brick walls and tiled roofs, and used to be the Zhao family ancestral hall. The landlord charges an absurdly low rent, with just one condition: I can't touch the wall on the east side of the main hall.
On the night of the Ghost Festival, the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, an old man with no shadow pushed open the door.
His pulse was thirty beats per minute, and his body temperature was twenty degrees. I was about to call the police when he placed a piece of spirit money on the table. "Keep the consultation fee."
He pointed to the entrance and said the place had once been his Zhao family's ancestral hall. Now that the path between the living and the dead had opened, the gates of the underworld were waiting for me to "stock up."
That night, the Soul-Calling Bell rang throughout Yongning Alley.
The next day, a paper bride stood at my door. Her skin was white paper, her lips were painted with vermilion, and she wore a bright red wedding dress. A heartbeat thumped inside her chest.
She said her name was Zhao Lingxi. A hundred years ago, to seal the gates of the underworld, she had refined herself into a paper doll.
And the clinic I had rented was the final lock on those gates.
Now, the lock had loosened.
From that day on, my little clinic treated the living by day and ghosts by night. Old people who couldn't find the road to reincarnation, teachers who didn't know they were dead, and red-dressed female ghosts carrying babies in search of substitutes all came to my door one after another.
Other doctors treat illnesses that won't kill you. I treat the illness of "dying and still refusing to let go."
Then, one day, Zhao Lingxi's heartbeat stopped.
Only then did I realize the gates of the underworld had never been sealed. And my clinic was built right on top of them.
