Minzhou Zhiyin

The Lao Lin family has opened a paper-making shop for three generations in Luozhou Ancient Lane. There are three dead rules carved on the wooden board behind the door: Don't pierce people's faces, don't light midnight lamps, and don't collect copper coins with red strings from unknown sources. Lin Ye followed his grandfather to learn how to make paper figurines since he was a child. Until one early morning, his grandmother knelt at the door of the shop, handed him an old copper coin stained with the soil of Minzhou City, and asked him to make a living paper figurine exactly like his son who had been dead for three years. Only then did he realize that his grandfather was simply pretending to be dead when he was burned to death in the shop, and that the book "Yin Yang Zha Pu" left behind was not some evil exorcism technique, but a dragnet set up by three generations of veteran detectives throughout their lives. Hidden in the bodiless paint are the last words of the owner of the Su Workshop seven years ago. Buried in the rammed earth of the ancient theater building in Three Lanes and Seven Alleys are the bones of a theater troupe from fifty years ago. The ghosts of miners who have been buried in the Shoushan ancient mines for ten years are buried in the old mines. The traces of lacquer heads floating up from the bottom of the Nantai River. The bamboo strip knife in Lin Ye's hand cut through the mulberry paper with a click, and what was poked out was not a soul-inducing paper man, but a hook that pulled out the smuggling criminals who had been hiding in the dark for half a century and sent them to the government office one by one. The steam from the fish ball stall in the old alley floats up along the bluestone slabs, and the white lantern at the door of the paper shop is swayed by the wind, illuminating a bright way home for everyone who is stuck in the old days and has no time to go home.