Faceless Person

The rules of the paper-making shop were set by my grandfather: do not touch the eyes of the dead, and do not draw the eyebrows of the dead. Gu Yan had followed the rules for seven years and never asked why. Until Xiulan's last words before her death - "Someone is painting me" - she was involved in a game that lasted seven years. People in the town died one after another, with smiles on their faces and their bodies as dry as paper. Su Tang, who claimed to be a student of folklore, suddenly broke in, with a red string tied on her wrist that did not belong to her, and a scrap of paper with the words "Chen Jiu's painted face" hidden in her pocket. Gu Yan began to see traces on his skin that were not human: the wounds did not bleed, the candlelight could penetrate his fingers, and people on the street walked around him. In the shop he was guarding, there was a paper man with an always empty face, and the position of that face was exactly opposite where he looked in the mirror every morning. He thought he was tracking a serial murder case. He didn't know that he was the face that had been waiting to be painted all his life. The fire that was burned seven years ago, the child hidden in the paper man seven years ago, the contract made seven years ago - no one told Gu Yan that he was no longer alive. Chen Jiu is painting faces. The trouble lies in debt collection. Grandpa hid the answer on the last page in the paper. Gu Yan only had a quarter of an hour to find his face before his soul was shattered.