Unlisted Mountains and Rivers

The watch drum of Linhe County had sounded three times, and an old boatman who had been dead for seven years came to the county government office to pay the household tax for the coming year on behalf of the 471 people in Qingshi Village. Nineteen-year-old scribe Shen Yan recognized the dead man and Qingshi Village. That's his hometown. But there is no Qingshi Village in the county annals, and there is no Qingshi Village on the map. Everyone around me insists that there has never been such a place in Linhe County. Even Shen Yan's own relocation documents turned into blank paper overnight. The only thing that could prove that he remembered correctly was a correction mark left by his sister Shen Qinghe twelve years ago. But my sister has disappeared long ago. No one knows where she went and why she left traces in a blank county journal. At the same time, for the first time, the wordless monument in the backyard of the county magistrate's office, which had been silent for twelve years, appeared with writing: "Shen Yan died of impersonation. There is no such person in the world." In three days he will die. But before that, he must figure out—— Where did Qingshi Village go? Is the person who comes to pay taxes late at night a dead person, or a living person who has been forgotten by everyone? When county annals began to turn white, relatives and friends no longer remembered each other, rivers bypassed bridges, and mountain gods stepped down from altars, Shen Yan finally realized: Someone is rewriting this land. And he may be the next person to be erased.