The Era of Ghost Stories

"Era of Strange Tales" kicks off with a sudden change in the rules - when the daily life in the city is infiltrated by inexplicable "codes", from the need to avoid certain shelves when shopping in the supermarket, to counting the steps when walking in the corridors, the seemingly trivial rules gradually become a dense network, and the price of violating the rules is far weirder than "punishment": some people's shadows start to act independently, some people's memories rust along with the items, and some people see themselves waving repeatedly in the mirror. The protagonist Chen Mo discovers in the chaos that these rules are not traceable - they always revolve around "fear": people who are afraid of the dark will be pushed into dark alleys, and people who are afraid of heights will receive an "invitation" from the rooftop. What is even more alarming is that the more one obeys the rules, the more like a puppet being pulled by strings, and the light in his eyes goes out little by little. When he found yellowed old newspapers in the archives of an abandoned hospital, he discovered that the "tide of disappearances" half a century ago was exactly the same as the current one, and the blurred signature in the corner of the newspaper actually overlapped with his grandfather's name. From resistance to temptation, from teaming up to crack loopholes in rules to taking the initiative to break inertial thinking, Chen Mo and a group of people who do not want to be assimilated find hope in the gap between "code" and "human nature". They discovered that the real "weird stories" were never the weird clauses, but the numbness of people who gradually gave up thinking in fear - just like a domesticated pet, they would eventually forget that they could tear apart the cage.