Notes on Hidden Calamities

My name is Zhou Xuan. I'm nineteen, and right after starting college, a beat-up diploma dragged me back to the old house. My parents have been missing for nearly four years. No one's seen them alive, and no one's found them dead. Yet money lands in my account right on the fifteenth of every month. It's even weirder than the mysteries in their own novels.

Then I found the black notebook. Its pages were blank as a face, but words appeared on their own. Right after that, a "ghost cop" in a black trench coat showed up at my door, claiming I'd taken the ledger that recorded evil spirits' movements. From then on, I was forced into the job. This guy, Qin Jian, is as cold as a pan's bottom, with a stare that could freeze you to death, and he insists on dragging me along to investigate.

Then we picked up Lu Xun, a plant spirit with green eyes who loves chewing on grapes. He said he wanted to join our "ghost-catching squad." From Furnace No. 3 at the crematorium to the experimental subject in the air-raid shelter, from the peony pillow at the old embroidery shop to the morgue at the psychiatric hospital, we've exposed plenty of evil spirits wearing human skin and seen that human nature can be more terrifying than ghosts.

The notebook is still burning hot, and clues about my parents are getting closer. Me? I'm a history student forced into the job, caught every day between "I can't live like this anymore" and "Just one more case." After all, I've got the key to the truth in my hands, even if it's scorching hot.

Theme: The struggle between the depths of human nature and a glimmer of redemption