Records of Strange Events in Zhishanzhai

In the early years of Guangxu, the smoke of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had just dispersed, and the sound of the Nian Army's horse hooves had faded away, but the people's lives were not peaceful. The court's indemnities and taxes were like invisible whips that made people breathless. It happened to catch up with the "Dingwu Qihuang" - three years without rain, thousands of miles of bare ground. The tragic story of bark being gnawed away, grass roots being dug up, and the seeds being exchanged for food is no longer news. However, the old people murmured privately: After three years of drought, some things cannot be hidden anymore. Those who passed by the mass graves at night could clearly hear scratching sounds in the soil; the water drawn from the wells glowed with fishy red at dawn. No one dared to say more. People don't care about the way of this world, so how can they care about those things that cannot be explained - they are in the dark, ready to move.