Strange News from All Directions

In the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, the world was in chaos, and there were more ghosts hidden in people's hearts than in the barren mountains and graves. Shen Mu, a scholar whose family is in decline, travels across villages and towns with a pair of peddlers. In addition to needles and threads, there are also some old objects collected in the load: a rhombus mirror that reflects no human figure, a shadow puppet that can sing lost tunes, and a peachwood comb with the words "Don't look back" engraved on it. Everywhere he went, there was always an old man pulling him to talk about those weird things that were kept secret - the person who borrowed the knife for twenty years kept a prophecy for twenty years, and what he came back to collect was not gold and silver, but life; the paper maker made an exception for his drowned grandson, and the paper boy actually walked into the river on his own in the first seven nights; the man who fished for corpses from the Yellow River saw his own face at the bottom of the river, and tied around his wrist was a colorful rope dedicated to He Bo fifty years ago... He is just a passing witness. He does not intervene or decipher. He only puts the old object deep into his burden after each story ends and continues on the road. Folk customs are the skin and human feelings are the bones. Each story is independent and can be read at will. The storyteller was stunned, and you and I entered that bizarre old time.