The gaming console ordered online by college senior Tao Jianyu arrives. He opens the box, only to find a brass kaleidoscope inside.
No power supply. Self-illuminating. Binding method: imprint your iris pattern, voiceprint, and heartbeat.
First game, "The Sacrifice": In Republican-era Wujin, during the Bai family's birthday banquet, he plays a funeral attendant who protects the young lady as they fight their way out. The next day, the ending he reached becomes a news story that can't be deleted from the entire internet.
Second game, "Come Up the Mountain on the Seventh Night After Death": Six paper figures carry a coffin up Mount Yin. There are 5,300 steps of gray stone. He trades his guiding lamp for the lives of his entire team. That same night, a white figure appears on the real-life sea, striding over the waves to save people.
Third game, "May the Incense Never Cease": He gives the shrine keeper the name "Silent." In the game, the shrine keeper doesn't live past twenty-four. Outside the game, a 1937 archive records: Bai Tao, a touch of white at his left temple. The accounts of Wujin will be settled again eighty-nine years later.
The sender, the Silent Company, cannot be found in any records. The kaleidoscope repeats just one line, no matter how many times it's turned:
I burn incense for the dead.
Merit is entered in the ledger, life and death recorded in the register. This time, it's his turn to burn all the incense left unburned for the dead over the past eighty-nine years.
