Every family in Yunwu Town is engaged in papermaking. The paper horse can walk, the paper bird can fly, and the paper man can guard the soul of the world and ward off disasters for the Lord. But there is a strict rule in this craft: every time a paper person is made, the creator loses a point of "vitality" - which can range from forgetfulness to lifespan.
Shen Du is an outlier in the town and the only "soul master". Others were pricking dead things, but only the paper figurine he was pricking could really open his eyes and take a breath. The townspeople feared him like a monster and respected him like a god, but they secretly called him "the zombie maker". Because the price he paid was not life span, but "existence" - love would be forgotten, pain would disappear, and even he himself could hardly remember what it was like to be alive.
A "falling incident" saved the Wang family from death, but it crushed Shen Du's last dignity. He heard the heartbeat at the same frequency as his own at the bottom of a dry well in the backyard. After the walls of the well peeled off, a paper face exactly like his was revealed.
It turns out that this town was built on a huge "paper coffin". Thirty-six squares and thousands of lights are maintained by sucking "vital energy". Shen Du is not a human being. He is the spirit left behind by the "Paper Ancestor" back then. He is the only variable in this dead game.
When the paper figures were arrayed and the living were being buried, Shen Du dipped his fingertips in blood and tapped lightly between his eyebrows:
"Today, I want this paper sky to be burned clean."
Purpose: To write about the loneliness and tenderness of the forgotten through the cruel exchange of "paper figures taking over their lives and gradually losing their vitality". Discuss the meaning of "existence": People do not live because they are remembered, and they do not have souls because they are paper. Shen Du used his own disappearance to fight against the fate of cannibalism, fighting for a glimmer of real life for the powerless in the ashes and oblivion.
