The Grave-Keeping Snake Is Playing Pitiful Again Today

On the nineteenth day after his third brother went missing, Gu Chuling brought a black snake back from the storm drains.

The snake didn't bite. When asked a question, it tapped the floor to answer. It had no name, until his father blurted out two words: Nie Yan.

Gu Chuling was a university professor who taught tomb architecture and waterworks. Keeping records was second nature to him. But over the next month, everything he wrote down with his own hand defied reason:

A paper effigy that had been standing for fifteen years left home in the middle of the night and walked all the way to his front door. A white fox by an abandoned well was missing a piece of its demon bone, and no matter what it did, it couldn't grow back. The loudspeaker at a deserted railway station powered itself on and repeated the name of someone who had been dead for years. Mirrors in an old apartment building began predicting how people would die, and every prediction came true on time.

Nine waterways. Nine old debts. They all pointed to the same person: someone who had been making decisions for everyone since twenty-seven years ago.

Gu Chuling dug through the old files and found a page about himself.

Sealed medical records from after 1987, starting from the year he was born. The signature wasn't his, but a family member's. The person who signed for him had said, “I'll tell you once the danger has passed.”

But the danger had never passed.

Then the crystal coffin opened, and Gu Chuling saw someone who looked exactly like him. The man opened his eyes and asked, “Has he come back?”

Gu Chuling said, “I'm not him.”