Folk Supernatural / Dad Raising a Child / Play the Pig to Eat the Tiger / Adorable Baby Celestial Master / Episodic Story
Part 1: The Hook
Chen Jiu, the poorest man in Qingshui Village, found an idiot little girl. She was five years old and couldn’t call anyone by name. All she did was squat by the old well and say to the empty opening, “Don’t cry.”
Part 2: The Promise
Everyone in the village laughed at him, saying the father made paper effigies and the daughter saw ghosts. It wasn’t until Second Wang’s wife, dressed in a paper funerary gown, hanged herself from a roof beam and the coffin started knocking in the middle of the night that the whole village panicked and came looking for the “paper effigy maker” to handle the funeral. Chen Jiu lifted the coffin lid and needed only one look at the fingernails to know the woman hadn’t hanged herself. He had dealt with this exact method once before, ten years ago.
Part 3: The Mystery
And the thing that crawled out of the well fell to its knees before five-year-old Chen Xiaoman and cried out in a trembling voice, “My lord, spare me.”
Who is Xiaoman, really? And why did Chen Jiu put away his blade for ten years?
