Dongpu, Linhu, Shishi, Fujian. Year after year, the salty sea breeze eats away at the lonely, dilapidated stone house on the shore. It is home to a silent brother and sister: Qiu Zhi and Qiu Shuangnu.
For generations, their family has watched over these waters, known as the Bone Reef. It is said that countless wronged spirits from ancient sacrificial rites involving girls lie beneath the waves. The one the fishermen fear most is a ghost in a red wedding gown, with her hair piled high: the Lady of the Coiled Bun. Legend says that a hundred years ago, her family and lover betrayed her. On her wedding day, she was nailed alive into a coffin and sunk beneath these waters. Her resentment has never faded. On foggy nights or nights of the new moon, she combs her hair on the rocks, searching for a substitute to complete the wedding that was left unfinished.
Qiu Zhi has always thought it was just a country tale to scare children, until one night, as thick fog rolled in, his sister Qiu Shuangnu began wandering toward the sea as if in a dream, murmuring an ancient wedding song. Even stranger, her appearance began to grow more and more like that of a woman in antique clothing shown in a tattered portrait in the ancestral hall, day after day, whenever she dreamed...
To save his sister, Qiu Zhi has no choice but to delve into his family's forbidden past and the eerie Sunken Wedding Shoal beneath the coastline. He discovers that his family's bloodline has long been bound to the Lady of the Coiled Bun's resentment. This year marks the next turn of the cycle, and the Lady needs a living body to come ashore. The one she has chosen is Qiu Shuangnu.
Fog shrouds the sea, red candles light by themselves, and ancient wedding music rings out in an empty stone house. Before the ghost wedding can be completed, Qiu Zhi must find a way to break the century-old curse among the shattered family records, the damp sailors' songs, and the Lady of the Coiled Bun's ceaseless hair-combing. His only clue is a fragment of a paper wedding gown, soaked by the tide and found in a crack in the old house's wall, with a blurred spell written on it:
"Never comb your hair facing the sea; let no dust touch the wedding gown. If you see the Lady of the Coiled Bun smile, you are already in the coffin."
Theme: Ghosts and monsters.
