My Name Is Tianbao

My name is Jiujiu. I’m sensitive and timid by nature, insecure and cautious. More than anything, I’ve always feared poverty and a life of wandering. I’ve spent years taking odd jobs far from home just to get by. I thought I’d live out my days in obscurity, until a trip home to sweep my ancestors’ graves dragged me into an inescapable nightmare of fate. On the desolate road back to my hometown, a strange-looking, unidentified little white bug latched onto me and wouldn’t let go. From the moment it appeared, the quiet mountain village changed completely. Strange nightmares came night after night, casting their shadow over the whole village. The villagers, who had long harbored grudges, could take revenge at will through their dreams. One after another, their old enemies met bizarre, sudden deaths in their sleep. As murders piled up and rumors swept through the village, everyone saw me as an ill-omened harbinger of disaster. They were convinced my return had brought calamity, and pinned every sin on me. Strange bugs appeared beside two villagers, identical to the one on my shoulder. Consumed by fear, I fled the village in the middle of the night with a paralyzed old man and a woman I knew, Sister Cheng. But the nightmares never stopped. They followed me everywhere. In the towns we passed and the inns where we stayed, ordinary people kept dying suddenly in their sleep. I spent every day blaming myself and sinking into despair. Wherever I went, death followed. Before the paralyzed old man died, he gave me a strange look. He hated me. I should have confessed my sins and died, but by chance I stumbled upon a new clue and finally uncovered the ultimate truth behind all the strange events. One obsession can overturn a hundred miles of the human world; countless fears can imprison an entire life. The world calls me a harbinger of disaster, but no one knows that in this fateful deception, I’m merely the most pitiable and innocent scapegoat of all.