You Call That a Village Rule?

[Play the Pig to Eat the Tiger + Folk Mystery + No Romance]

His already-buried uncle sent Zhou Chang'an an invitation to a ghost wedding.

Twelve guests were invited. Their places were set at the table, but there was no way out beyond the door.

The villagers smiled and said, "Now that you're here, you have to follow our village rules."

While everyone else scrambled for talismans to save their lives, he crouched by the stove checking the work order. While everyone else was afraid to approach the red coffin, he stared at the itemized bill and asked about his pay.

His teammates thought he was desperate for money. The host thought he could be pushed around.

Then the dead man pouring the wine walked around him, and the host, who had planned to make someone else pay with their life, was sent back to his own seat.

"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm just a hired hand."

He kept his true judgment to himself, then turned around and asked the host to settle the bill.

But even a hired hand couldn't get through a job without paying a price.

A child at the bottom of a well waited in vain for food. Six coffins had a seventh delivery slip. The play onstage was not yet over, but the names of the living below had already been written into the lyrics.

After each job, he had to leave something behind: his wages, his blood, or a companion who would never return.

And in those old ledgers, with their entries crossed out and rewritten, he found his father, missing for nineteen years.

The deeper he dug, the more he realized: some ghosts only wanted their names back, while some living people wanted them to stay silent forever.

Even the protection his own family offered might not be above reproach.

Later, the entire city received invitations to rejoin the clan.

Someone came bearing the family genealogy and asked him to take the seat of honor.

Zhou Chang'an opened the old ledger and asked,

"Don't rush to claim me as kin."

"Why should someone else pay for the lives you've taken?"

When the whole county received invitations to rejoin the clan, the other party promised that if he took over as the clan's fixer, his father would be allowed to come home.

Zhou Chang'an opened the old ledger.

"Then let's start by investigating my own family."

"Once the books are settled, it's time to change these rules."