Chengxi Resentment

A novel without ghosts, but with "ghosts" everywhere. In Chengxi Town during the rainy season, old houses are dripping with water, moss is growing, and the murmur of Wu language is scattered in the humid air. Folklore researcher Shen Yan returned to his hometown to attend to the funeral of his grandmother, but was told that a person who died unexpectedly violated the ancient taboo of "never leaving the house and not burying him". The funeral had to be postponed. That night, a strange phenomenon suddenly occurred in the old house. An unfamiliar Wu language murmured from the depths of the hall, with ancient tones that sounded like weeping; the shroud prepared for grandma appeared on the back of a completely different chair in the early morning; on the night of the death of the evil spirit, the closed door opened silently at midnight, and there was only an empty water alley and continuous rain outside. The police believed it was a man-made prank, but Shen Yan found half a family tree, a copper seal for water transport, and seven words she wrote before her death among her grandmother's belongings: "Chengxi Ferry, Silk Square Resentment, Ancestral Hall Lock" Since then, Shen Yan has entered a fog that has lasted for hundreds of years. The silkworms that died overnight in the silkworm room, the human faces that appeared under the Soul Crossing Bridge, the tablets that collapsed without wind in the ancestral hall, the ancient book "The Resentment of Chengxi" that left the audience speechless at the Pingtan nightclub... All the strange things closely correspond to the taboos passed down from generation to generation in the water towns of southern Jiangsu: The deceased will not be admitted to the ancestral hall, the name will not be called out when sailing at night, no stranger will be seen in the silkworm room, and the empty boat will not be tied under the bridge. People in the town said it was an innocent soul seeking his life. The developer said it was caused by feng shui. The clan elders said that they violated the rules of a hundred years ago. Only Shen Yan and auxiliary police officer Su Wan, one holding the ancestral "Chengxi Folklore Notes" and the other firmly believing in the logic of physical evidence in criminal investigation, glimpsed another layer of truth in their conflicts and interactions -