Novels like The Living Must Keep Away
Books Chinese readers most often put in the same booklists as The Living Must Keep Away, best match first.
- 101 The Sixth Man's Strange Tales 老六诡事 A collection of true stories about all kinds of inexplicable, supernatural events personally experienced by people around me. Just think of it as my attempt to pass off some tales as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio! Not for the faint of heart! Not for the faint of heart! Not for the faint of heart! I’m repeating it three times because it’s important! I don’t make up stories. I’m simply passing them along! 72Reads—Score—Shelves
- 102 The Yin-Yang Affairs Office 阴阳事务所 The Yin-Yang Affairs Office is closed during the day and open at night. We don't take cases from the living, only from ghosts. I'm a man of principles. What? A pretty young lady wants to come visit? Yo, I might consider it! A bewitchingly beautiful, sultry red-robed female ghost; a headless ghost whose head was chopped off with an axe; the Black and White Impermanence from the underworld... They're all regulars here. To tell you the truth, even the King of Hell was raised by me! 354Reads7.8Score101Shelves
- 103 Terrifying Tales 惊魂诡事 Deep, silent alleyways, eerie, terrifying deserted villages, reed marshes choked with weeds... Every scene holds some of my most unforgettable memories! Everything that happens in this book is something I saw or heard myself. You can also read it as a story. Curious about the supernatural tales that have taken place in rural villages and mountain hamlets? Have you ever heard of or seen something that made your hair stand on end? If you find yourself sleepless in the dead of night, put on your he 314Reads6.5Score—Shelves
- 104 The Eight Immortals Bear a Coffin, While the Weasel Bows 八仙抬棺，黄皮子磕头 A filial son's head rolls through the streets. The living die, and their descendants bury them. Sons kneel; daughters become nuns. My dad is the only one in the village who can see and interpret omens. This is the story of the strange and wondrous things I witnessed after taking up his mantle! 243Reads6.4Score108Shelves
- 105 The Unlucky Heavenly Master Walks the Mortal World 冤种天师走人间 The Maoshan Celestial Master holds yin and yang in check, slays ghosts, banishes demons, and dispels ill omens. A three-foot peachwood sword, a stick of incense for virtue! My fate is unusual: I court death but never die, so my master took me in as a disciple and taught me the secret arts of Maoshan. After descending the mountain, I met a beautiful older girl I knew as a child, and she led me down a road of no return. A beauty in an ice coffin, a snow-mountain witch, a fox spirit beneath the moo 729Reads7.4Score101Shelves
- 106 The Coffin Walks at Night 灵棺夜行 I was carrying a coffin up the mountain for a burial when they stuffed me inside and buried me alive. Then, in a single night, all three hundred or so people in the village vanished. Only at night was the place alive with voices. I crawled out of the coffin, only to discover... 5.8kReads8.2Score366Shelves
- 107 Sewing Yin Corpses, Suppressing Ghostly Calamities 缝阴尸，镇鬼祸 [Six Lines and Eight Trigrams, Soul Banners and Sacrificial Rites] Humans have three souls and seven spirits; ghosts have obsessions from the Nine Hells and the karmic flames of the Five Aggregates. But ever since I was born, I have been missing my [Earth Soul]. I’ve dealt with corpses since I was little. Other children played with colorful building blocks, fluffy stuffed animals, and little tin cars that could run. My toys were one battered corpse after another. Qimen Dunjia, puppetry that mani 823Reads6.7Score101Shelves
- 108 The Night-Sealed Door 夜封门 Seven months pregnant, the woman was brutally hounded to death, and her seven-month-old baby was thrown into a well. Her wronged soul is cut off from the road ahead, and evil spirits come to claim their due. The gates of hell swing open, and the underworld seals its doors in the dead of night. 2kReads8.3Score159Shelves
- 109 The Rebirth Shop: I Handle Paranormal Cases at the Funeral Home 往生铺：我在殡仪馆处理灵异事件 My name is Chen Yang, and I run a funeral shop called Passing On in the outskirts of the city. By day, I sell wreaths and make paper effigies. My business is with the dead. At midnight, I burn incense and light candles, dealing with the “unclean things” that the living would rather avoid. 350Reads—Score—Shelves
- 110 Zhang Laosan Tells Stories 张老三讲故事 Long, long ago, a strange calamity struck Kaoshan Village, deep in the old forests of Northeast China. Hunter Li Dashan kept watch over a coffin on a snowy night and encountered a weasel spirit that spoke like a human, asking him to give it a title. One careless remark from him exposed a bloody secret from twenty years earlier. When the statue of the Yellow Immortal on the ancestral hall’s altar split with bloody cracks on the night of a lunar eclipse, when a golden-haired weasel burst from a pe 8Reads—Score—Shelves
- 111 A Collection of Ancient Folk Tales of the Supernatural 古代民间灵异故事合集听来的故事 A hugely popular collection on Tomato Listen, featuring rule-based horror, infinite-loop survival, folk customs and taboos, deranged killers, deadly survival instances, feng shui, livestreaming, modern technology, and many other kinds of horror. Volume One: Classical ghost stories. A blend of modern and classical taboos: never look in the mirror at midnight, someone is under the bed... A wedding sedan, an old well, an ancestral shrine, a nighttime opera... Any ordinary thing can become a spirit; 4Reads—Score—Shelves
- 112 The Water-Taming Beast 镇水兽 They say a fish couldn't possibly survive for seventy years, yet this one has been wreaking havoc for just as long! What lies beneath the waters of the Mian River, so shocking that it has dragged so many people down to their deaths? The surface of the rivers you see may seem calm, but you might not know that in those terrifying, eerie depths, a water guardian beast could be lurking, striking at lives as fragile as moths before they even know it's there, like a demon on the hunt... 719Reads8.8Score102Shelves
- 113 365 Nights of Corpse Tales from the Gorge 峡江尸话365夜 The poorer and more desolate the land, the stranger the tales; deep in the gorges along the river, there are stories of the supernatural. My hometown lies in the mountains of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, in an area where several ethnic minorities live together. Before Liberation, it was a backward wilderness beyond the reach of government control. Over the long course of history, many baffling things happened here. After I was born, I heard plenty of chilling tales of strange happeni 117Reads8.0Score—Shelves
- 114 The Midnight Restaurant 午夜饭店 I opened a restaurant that can only open in the middle of the night, and it has all sorts of rules. I'm starting to suspect that none of my customers are human. What should I do? Asking online. 46Reads7.7Score—Shelves
- 115 The Paranormal Master of Xuan Zong Feng Shui 玄宗风水术师之灵异先生 City life, celestial masters, the supernatural, feng shui, talismans, witchcraft, dark arts, ghost hunting, exorcisms, monster slaying, evil-spirit banishment, demon subjugation, battling zombies, living with a policewoman. No cultivation. 764Reads6.1Score107Shelves
- 116 The Ghost Emerges from the Coffin 鬼出棺 Xie Bangui is secretly recruited into the Ghost Yamen and, on his master's orders, serves there, making a living by hunting demons and ghosts. Yet he has no idea that he carries a world-shaking secret. Leading the Ghost Yamen's warriors, Xie Bangui launches a night raid on a prison for evil spirits, fights a bloody battle on the execution platform against a demon, encounters a soul-snatching carriage, and cleverly breaks a skeleton lock. He survives evil spirits' attempts to claim his life, outw 1.5kReads9.1Score139Shelves
- 117 Death on Delivery 死亡外卖 Never try to save money when ordering takeout! After ordering a meal that wasn't clean, strange events keep happening, and his coworkers begin dying one by one. Some takeout costs you money. Some takeout costs you your life. My other completed novel, The Hell Company, is over a million words long. Come check it out, dear readers~~ 2.4kReads8.7Score225Shelves
- 118 The Yin-Yang Occult Artisan 阴阳诡匠 As the old saying goes: “Better to offend the King of Hell than a carpenter.” A carpenter isn't someone who puts together a plank to make a door or builds a table. That's just woodworking! A true carpenter understands the yin and yang, knows feng shui, and can bring prosperity to a household or cause someone to die a sudden, violent death. I might have spent my whole life as an ordinary woodworker, if Grandma hadn't given me a mysterious old book... 4.7kReads7.0Score494Shelves
- 119 Tomb of the Yin 镇阴棺 I was always at my grandfather’s side, helping people relocate graves. There was a special burial practice involved in moving graves called a second burial. It required opening the coffin, gathering the bones, and dressing them in new clothes. The first time I encountered a second burial, I dug up a female corpse that looked lifelike... 122Reads8.6Score—Shelves
- 120 Young Feng Shui Master 少年风水师 There are many things in this world that you and I have never encountered. Just because we've never encountered them doesn't mean they don't exist. Legends are often more than mere legends. And traditions must have an unknown reason for becoming traditions. 632Reads9.0Score114Shelves
- 121 My Funeral Clothing Shop Only Takes Orders from Ghosts 我开的寿衣店，只接鬼订单 The day Zhang Zaizai took over the funeral clothing shop his grandfather left behind, he discovered it wasn’t an ordinary funeral business at all. The ledger was an order system for the underworld, the paperweight was a soul-pinning nail that kept vicious ghosts at bay, and even the “New Order” alerts from the delivery app came from “Mr. Li in Bed 3 of the morgue.” “Ding! Order accepted. Task: Deliver a peachwood comb to the Midnight Hair-Combing Ghost. Rule: Do not meet her eyes while combing h —Reads—Score—Shelves
- 122 The Young Feng Shui Master 少年风水师 When I was ten, my grandfather built a coffin for himself with his own hands... From that moment on, the heavens shattered and all realms fell into chaos. [The 2021 feng shui and fantasy masterpiece!] 633Reads8.1Score136Shelves
- 123 Folk Tales of the Mountain Wilds 民间山野怪谈 A lifetime spent roaming the martial world, telling tales of ghosts and strange happenings from the countryside. Stories of spirits and monsters in the wilderness have always been a staple of people's conversations over tea, and folk tales about mountain ghosts and gods come in every variety. There is a kind of extraordinary man who can help people choose burial sites and homes, divine life and death, reveal the secrets of fate, dispel evil spirits, travel to the underworld, save lives, and ward 1.1kReads8.9Score151Shelves
- 124 Heaven's Secrets Forbidden: A Metaphysics Master's Art of Feng Shui and Yin-Yang 天机禁忌：玄门风水相师镇阴阳 Xu Daoyi was born with a pure Yang constitution, a once-in-a-century rarity. The Yang energy within him was so strong it could burn vengeful ghosts to ash. But this gift was also a death sentence. His master told him that unless he found a woman with a pure Yin birth chart before the Summer Solstice and united their Yin and Yang, he would explode and die seven days later. The seven-day deadline drew closer, and the Yang energy in his body surged higher every day. Xu Daoyi had saved countless liv 110Reads—Score155Shelves
- 125 Strange Tales of Min Mountain 岷山异事 In the 1980s, businessman Mo Wenshan traveled to the Min Mountains to survey the market. By a twist of fate, he became entangled in a tomb-robbing case, setting off a series of strange and perilous ancient tomb expeditions. In the process, the secrets of the ancient Shu civilization, hidden for a thousand years, came to light… 208Reads8.7Score—Shelves
- 126 A Horror Story Lives Next Door 你的隔壁住着恐怖故事 Have you ever noticed how horror lurks everywhere in your everyday life? Listen. Listen closely... Where does horror come from? Nothing is scarier than reality. The unknown parts of our real lives, and the anxieties and desires we feel about them, are the greatest sources of horror. 12.3kReads9.4Score2kShelves
- 127 The Demon Wife at Home 家有妖妻 Grandma arranged a marriage for me. Only after the wedding did I learn that the bride I'd brought home was a fox spirit... Chapter preview: …I stole a glance into the pool. A beautiful older girl was standing by the washing platform, washing her hair. She was gorgeous, with snow-white skin, delicate willow-shaped brows, an oval face, and luscious red lips like ripe cherries. Most striking of all were her captivating, tender eyes, deep as a pool of spring water. She was alluring to the very cor 1.9kReads8.2Score130Shelves
- 128 Borrowing Yin Lifespan 借阴寿 Have you ever slept wearing burial clothes? Don’t try it. I did once, and that night... My name is Li Yiliang. I was born with a shortened lifespan, and my birth caused my mother to die in childbirth. But one night when I was eighteen, my mother came back and said she wanted to take me with her... My grandfather told me to sleep in burial clothes, then gave his own life to help me escape that fate. From then on, my life was never free of strange and uncanny things... 4.7kReads8.9Score411Shelves
- 129 One Hundred Thousand and One Folk Horror Stories 十万零一个民间恐怖故事 A collection of short horror stories in an episodic format, with a new story every chapter. No dragging things out! Haunted houses in the countryside, mountain spirits, urban legends, old customs and taboos... Every kind of Chinese-style horror is covered, with nonstop thrills and no filler. Anti-superstition disclaimer: This story is entirely fictional. Believe in science and read rationally. Please don’t apply it to real life~ 304Reads—Score101Shelves
- 130 Forbidden Feng Shui Arts 风水禁术 My name is Yu Nianbai. I was supposed to die shortly after birth, but my father gave his life to extend mine, allowing me to survive. I thought I could live a peaceful life, but then someone dug up my father’s grave... 1.4kReads8.3Score107Shelves
- 131 A Yin Corpse Brought Me to the Mortal World: The Living, Keep Away 阴尸送我来人间，生人退避 My name is Luo Ansheng. I was delivered by a Yin Corpse. A Yin Corpse brought me into the world, and a hundred ghosts fought over their food. All manner of fearsome beings gathered, eager to devour my flesh and essence. After I gave them a good beating, they settled down and began competing to protect me. 4.2kReads8.8Score397Shelves
- 132 Someone New Appeared in the Footage 录像里多出一个人 The test shoot’s discarded footage was four seconds longer. Everyone in the frame held the same poses they had at the end of filming. No one moved. I counted three times. There were six people every time. But only five people had been there that day. On the hard drive my mother left behind, there was an empty folder with a four-character name: Do Not Fast-Forward. In the recycle bin was a deleted video, four minutes and twenty-five seconds long, which couldn’t be recovered. Our production crew w 3Reads—Score—Shelves
- 133 Tales of Feng Shui and Tombs 风水墓事 My name is Gu Xiaochuan! I went to move a woman’s grave, and then… 8.6kReads8.7Score809Shelves
- 134 I'm a Bar Owner, Forced to Catch Ghosts 我，酒吧老板，被迫营业捉鬼 [Horror + supernatural + semi-invincible + no System + not brainless + ruthless decisiveness] I’m Heibai, an utterly ordinary bar owner. I only wanted to live a quiet life, but one commission and one problem after another keep landing on my doorstep. Curse magic, a drug-induced dreamless sleep, a yin-yang wedding, a deadly text message... As the Underworld descends, little Jiangcheng becomes a den of danger, and one strange incident after another unfolds. Well, looks like I can’t hide my abiliti 1.2kReads8.8Score110Shelves
- 135 I'm Getting Married, But Is My Bride Even Human? 我要结婚了，新娘不是人？ Also known as "I'm a Taoist Priest at Taizhou University". One female lead + mystery + comedy + the supernatural, no System. Montage storytelling, with the principles of an infinite-flow novel. I bet you won't guess the ending. "Hey, hey, who are you? Why are you in my house?" "Your dad's dead. He asked me to look after you." "Bullshit! Get him out here to tell me himself. I want to see my lawyer!" That night, Dad appeared in my dream and slapped me. "Hurry up and burn some joss paper for me. I' 9Reads—Score—Shelves
- 136 Urban Hauntings: My Paper Knife Can Pierce Illusions 都市诡异：我的纸刀能破妄 The rating has just been released, so it may still go up. Zhang Ping, an unemployed advertising copywriter, is attacked by a paper figure with a slit mouth in his shared apartment on a stormy night, at the lowest point in his life. On the verge of death, he desperately throws out an old piece of yellow paper he has carried for years, unexpectedly activating a fragment of the ancestral “Blade of Illusion-Breaking” and a mysterious “Night Watchman System.” The System turns terrifying supernatural 3Reads8.3Score—Shelves
- 137 Chronicles of the Supernatural 异灵实录 At three in the morning, check the list of the dead; let the ferryman guide your soul. Chinese horror stories, spirit-summoning, death notes. Some things can be explained, while other feelings defy description. A terror that makes you shudder as you think it over rises from the depths of your heart. After reading these 99 stories, you'll find yourself questioning your own life. There's a rumor that you should never stay in the last room on the ground floor of a hotel. The author once traveled ou 24Reads9.2Score—Shelves
- 138 A Living Person's Ghost Marriage 活人冥婚 A ghost marriage is traditionally a union between two people who are already dead. But I was supposed to die at the age of three. By defying fate and holding a ghost wedding while still alive, I secured a future for myself… 425Reads—Score—Shelves
- 139 Republic-Era Notes on Summoning Evil 民国招邪笔记 Chinese-Style Horror + Episodic Mysteries + Ancestral Taboos + Republican-Era Suspense + Cursed Objects That Claim Lives Each supernatural case wraps up in three to five chapters. The pace is breakneck, with no dragging things out! Folk-horror elements: red wedding gowns, ancestral halls, midnight opera troupes... If you’re a scaredy-cat, read during the day. If you’re brave, listen to the audiobook at night for the full dose of terror. 87Reads—Score—Shelves
- 140 Raising a Fox as My Wife II 养狐为妻Ⅱ I am a jinx, born under an ill omen. To keep me alive, my grandfather arranged an extraordinary betrothal for me when I was a child… 293Reads7.3Score—Shelves
- 141 Infinite Eerie Domains: Starting with a Haunted Classroom 无限诡域：从诡异教室开始 [Infinite Flow]+ [Fake terror]+ [Ghosts kill people]+ [Emotionless]+ [Mild horror] Late at night, Su Wang receives a strange black letter that appears out of nowhere in his home. Its four blood-red survival rules reveal a terrifying, unknown realm. In the blink of an eye, he is forcibly dragged into a strange study hall at Chenfeng High School, where he and six strangers are trapped together. The one unbreakable rule is carved into the blackboard: Keep quiet. One survivor loses control, makes a 31.9kReads8.0Score4.3kShelves
- 142 The Maoshan Sect Master 茅山宗师 The greatest blessed land under heaven, the eighth grotto-heaven, is known as the Orthodox Maoshan Tradition! The Manifest Sect has carried its mandate for a thousand years, while the Esoteric Sect has subdued dragons across ten thousand miles. The thousand-year struggle between the two branches of the Maoshan Sect has become a legendary tale without precedent. Gathering the finest wisdom of the immortal way from the ages and preserving the ancient essence of rare secret arts, the path is simple 1.3kReads8.4Score105Shelves
- 143 Wayfarer Between Yin and Yang 阴阳行者 The ultimate truths of heaven and earth are two: death and parting, and the way between yin and yang. I protect the living in the world of light, driving out evil and subduing demons until every specter is vanquished. I guide the dead across the Yellow Springs, and set foot upon the Bridge of Helplessness without hesitation. A traveler between the realms of yin and yang, I bear the balance of life and death on my shoulders. Have you ever seen an old sheep knock at your door, or a paper figure sp 279Reads5.6Score—Shelves
- 144 Blood Wedding 血嫁 Ever since I received a strange hundred-yuan bill, every wedding I attend ends in bloodshed. The grooms have their throats slit, their blood splattering across the brides’ white gowns. Ten couples have died for no apparent reason, and I’m the only one who has seen the killer: the Grim Reaper, holding a scythe... A cold and aloof fiancé appears out of nowhere. A mysterious exorcist hides in a coffee shop. Strange supernatural incidents pull me into a terrifying, thrilling spiral. At last, the da 961Reads8.6Score121Shelves
- 145 Soul Reaper 收魂人 To stay alive, I had no choice but to marry a two-headed monster. But I never expected her to be a Rakshasa with two souls. My fate was utterly transformed, and I embarked on a perilous path full of thorns, surrounded by demons and spirits... 765Reads7.2Score116Shelves
- 146 By the Power of the Law 急急如律令 It all began when I took fifty yuan from a blind fortune-teller. Then, in the middle of the night, a woman's voice suddenly sounded behind me. 1.5kReads8.6Score160Shelves
- 147 The Bride of the Vengeful Ghost 猛鬼新娘 When I was sixteen, I rescued a woman who had been tricked into coming to our village, simply because I wanted to help. I never imagined that my actions would not only get the poor woman killed, but also lead to the deaths of more than a hundred villagers. And so my strange life began. 4.7kReads9.0Score333Shelves
- 148 The Strange and Supernatural Things I’ve Heard and Seen 那些我所闻所见的灵异事 I’ll tell stories about the strange things that have happened to me over the years, along with the folk secrets and I Ching mysticism I’ve learned. At the start of each story, I’ll say whether I experienced it myself or heard it from someone else. I may not tell them in chronological order. I need to remember and organize everything, so I’ll just talk about whatever comes to mind. Things I experienced myself may be exaggerated, but they’re absolutely true. As for some of the stories I’ve heard, 2.5kReads—Score163Shelves
- 149 The Yellow Springs Pawnshop 黄泉典当行 The Underworld Pawnshop has existed since time immemorial, with a long and storied history. It can travel between the worlds of the living and the dead, reaching the far shores of the Yellow Springs to trade with ghosts and gods. It stands somewhere in the modern city. Find the Underworld Pawnshop, and any wish can be granted, but only at an equal price. You can pawn anything you own: organs, years of your life, ancestral treasures, even your soul. In exchange, you can get whatever you desire: m 123Reads7.4Score—Shelves
- 150 A Book by the Speed-Loving Snail 爱飙车的蜗牛的一本书 My new work is out! You can read it on Tomato Novel. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Your support motivates me to write, and I’ll do my best to tell every story well! 845Reads7.9Score103Shelves
