The Carpenter Is Silent

On the day my grandfather passed away, I saw a black handprint on the beam of the mourning hall. But the mourning hall never burned paper money. My name is Lin Yan, a graduate student in the Department of Architecture. My grandfather was the last ink master in Sichuan. The inheritance he left me was a warm old ink fountain and half a copy of "Lu Ban Jing". The title page said: "Anyone who practices this technique should not do it three times and not touch it." On the first night after returning to my hometown, Aunt Wang next door said that there were footsteps in the attic of the newly renovated house every night. I walked into the room with an ink fountain and saw a small figure facing down growing out of the wood grain of the threshold. The thread flicked and the wood splintered. A copper nail rolled out of the broken wood, with a surname engraved on it. From that day on, I realized that the "win-wearing technique" mentioned by the elders was not superstition. Mortise and tenon joints can kill people, ink pipes can ward off evil spirits, and Lu Ban's ruler does not measure a house - it measures people's hearts. And the secret that grandpa has kept for twenty years is hidden under every beam in Qingmu Town. "I don't believe there is anything missing. Life is yours to take."