In the town of Punishment under the blood moon, all parents have umbilical cords of thorns. Those stings that pierce the children's hearts will bloom into bloody roses called "filial piety" at the coming-of-age ceremony.
Eighteen-year-old Shen Zhao hid in the attic clutching the hidden scissors. The sound of her mother trimming her nails could be heard downstairs - this "loving mother" who used her daughter's college entrance examination volunteers to knit sweaters was threading the needle with surveillance cameras. The security windows of 221 households in the town are buzzing tonight, like the wail of countless iron wombs during contraction.
When Shen Zhao discovered that all the young people in the town had the same blood contract emblem embedded in the back of their necks, and when the skeletons of 108 teenagers who committed mass suicide thirty years ago were dug up in the library cellar, she finally understood the touch of human skin on the cover of the "Book of Filial Piety" in her father's study. In the broken mirror, she saw the twisting thorn totem on her spine squirming, while the scissor blades reflected the intricate network of umbilical cords in the entire town's underground.
In this parricide ceremony using blood as ink and bones as pen, Shen Zhao will reveal the "evil god of filial piety" that the town has worshiped with the flesh and blood of parents and children for generations. When the town's security windows began to ooze blood and tears, the tip of the scissors she clenched was aimed at the rose that was about to bloom in her heart.
Purpose: yearning for a just world