Strange Tales: From the Start, I, a Little Mouse, Am the Only Variable

Lin Yi wakes up as a newborn gray mouse, laid out on a chopping board. The kindly old master holds a rusty butcher’s knife and tells him with a beaming smile, “Don’t worry. I’ll save your skin for the peeling.” Desperate, he bites off the old master’s severed finger, only to find no blood in its creases, just wriggling white maggots. He escapes the ancestral hall and opens the door, only to find another haunted house outside.