[A long, plot-focused story. I won’t change the tropes, but I might change the title. Set in the same universe as A Plan to Raise the Strange, though the stories are in completely different genres.]
[Dark, scheming green-tea top × mild-mannered, amnesiac human-machine bottom]
It’s easy to invite a god in, but hard to send one away. The same goes for evil spirits.
Ten years after his death, Chu Shengting pushed open his coffin and crawled back into this rotting world.
He had no heartbeat, and his face was pale, yet his features were so strikingly beautiful that he looked like a bewitching ghost out of an ancient painting.
He had forgotten many things. He only remembered that he seemed to be human.
And perhaps he never had been.
There was a small temple in the village. Its idol was carved from wood and molded from clay, its features indistinct, barely shaped into a human form.
The first time Chu Shengting entered the temple, he felt something staring right at him through that lump of clay.
His heart trembled. “Have... we met before?”
No one answered.
But as he turned to leave, he heard a soft sound behind him.
The idol had moved one step closer.
After that, Chu Shengting, who had never dreamed, began to dream.
In his dreams, a man with a blurred face trapped him in a tiny space. Their temples brushed, their breaths mingled.
Cold fingers traced his spine, as if caressing a precious treasure that had been lost and found again.
The touch was so gentle it was almost reverent, yet so greedy that he could not break free.
To his surprise, he didn’t resist. With every embrace, he sank deeper.
“Who... are you, really?” he asked between gasps, struggling to free himself.
“Have you even forgotten your husband?” The man’s low chuckle sounded against his ear, coiling around his neck like a poisonous snake. “An unfaithful man must be punished.”
But Chu Shengting didn’t want to be punished. “Then I’ll just wake up.”
“...Don’t!”
That which is “Taiwu” cannot be named or described.
The people of this land have lived alongside the “Taiwu” for thousands of years.
They have long grown accustomed to the moon overhead suddenly turning around, and the shadows behind them occasionally standing up.
The bronze mirror beneath Shanghai’s Huangpu River reflects wronged souls no one remembers.
Deep underground in Sichuan lies an empty city, filled with clay figures who have forgotten they are still alive.
The silkworm goddess of Jiangnan turns over inside her cocoon, using her threads to hold an endless spring in place.
Buried in the dunes of Dunhuang is an ancient god who died a thousand years ago and still whispers...
The seventeenth year of the Republic of China.
Chu Shengting returns from the far end of death, walking through a world that is on its last legs, yet unbelievably resilient.
For this long night, he will fight for a true dawn.
Bonus scene:
Gao Su (looking pitiful): “I’m the most filthy thing in the world, something that should never have existed, and I have all these strange tentacles. You’ll hate me, won’t you...”
Chu Shengting (thinking hard) (turns into a mass of solidified shadow): “Would I suit you better if I looked like this?”
Gao Su: “...Huh?”
Reading guide:
1. One-on-one romance, evil god × an even more evil god, happy ending.
2. The story is outlined and I have chapters saved up. I won’t abandon it.
3. Folk customs and Chinese-style cosmic horror in an alternate Republic of China setting, with a mountain of author-created lore.
Theme: Live toward the light, even in the face of death
