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"Smell the Smoke" is Xin You's first short story collection, which includes 16 short stories including "Smell the Smoke", "Lie Detector", and "Scent of Books". The 16 stories are either touching with warmth, titillating with obsession, or personified with supernatural beings. Although the stories are short, they fully show ordinary beings and various situations in the world. Doctors, couriers, barbers, company employees, class reunions, blind dates... We always turn a blind eye to the things around us, and we always think that the existence that inspires inner fear is still far away from us. What you have experienced may not be true, and what you have never heard of may be happening all the time.

When "I" and my newlywed wife from Dalian went to Taiwan for our honeymoon, we accidentally discovered a strange photo. Whenever the sun went down, a woman with her back in the photo would turn around. After returning to Dalian, "my" life was completely disrupted by that photo, and all kinds of horrible and bizarre things happened one after another.

When Xiao Mu and his newlywed wife were traveling on their honeymoon, they accidentally discovered a strange photo. The owner of the photo insisted that he was "cursed" because of the photo. He asked Xiao Mu to help him find the person in the photo and return the photo. Xiao Mu originally helped out of good intentions, but since then, his and his new wife's life has been effectively disrupted, and they have even fallen into a relationship crisis...

I have no other hobbies except drinking tea and listening to stories, so after I retired, I opened a teahouse where I specialize in drinking tea and listening to stories. One day, three guests came to the tea house. Amid the aroma of tea, we took turns telling 9 stories. Have you ever played Nine Links? These nine stories are like the nine-link chain. There is me in you and you in me. In every story there are clues to another story, and every clue involves an amazing mystery. After dismantling the nine stories and putting them together, it became another complete story spanning 41 years. To wash away sin with sin, to redeem death with death. In this story, some people lost their loved ones, some died quietly, and some raised their hands in anticipation of final relief. The person who set up the trap looks forward to the final pardon. Can the person who set up the trap really be pardoned...

A postman always finds some old unsealed letters in the mailbox, which record many puzzling things: a mysterious woman with precognitive abilities, an old man with a pile of rotten meat on his chest, a dish that can identify the author of anonymous love letters, and a slow poison that can kill people. As time went by, the postman gradually realized that there was some connection between the old letters from different periods, and they all had a common theme: death. What's even more terrifying is that there seems to be some mysterious force that deliberately allows the postman to peek at those old letters...

Ride the wind and live your life as you please.