Thirteen Subjects

In Qingshi Village, Fenghuang County, western Hunan, a song has been circulating for hundreds of years. Thirteen sentences, thirteen ways to die. The old people say that whoever sings all thirteen lines will die. Chen Du was restoring ancient books in the provincial capital when he received a call from his cousin-in-law: Uncle Uncle is gone. He rushed back for the funeral, only to find that his uncle had been dead for seven days, and he was still eating, talking, and greeting people during those seven days. The forensic doctor said that the body had been decomposed for at least seven days, and his cousin said that he had given him a bowl of rice noodles yesterday. My uncle left behind an iron box that was welded shut and could not be opened. There was a note attached to it: From Chen Du personally. The ancient well at the entrance of the village that had been dry for thirty years suddenly filled with water on the night he returned. A woman's voice came from the bottom of the well, singing exactly that ballad. The first sentence: The well platform is wet, the red shirt is rising, don't poke your head, she is at the bottom. Someone died that night. The way he died was exactly as the song said. The old man in the village said that the song was not meant to be scary - it was used to seal something away. But now, the seal is loose. And Chen Du slowly discovered that his return to this village was not accidental. The murder a hundred years ago that led to the scattering of the secret books of the Thirteen Subjects, the deliberately forgotten ballad, and the woman in the red wedding dress in the well. Waiting for him to come back.