Before Entering the Mountains, Ask What Taboos to Observe

There’s an old saying in the countryside: break these rules, and you’ll pay with your life. Don’t call out names at night. Don’t look back when crossing a bridge. Don’t step on the threshold when entering a door. My grandfather, Chen Shouye, was the last night watchman in the Wuling Mountains. Ten years ago, he went into the mountains to keep watch and never came back. All he left behind was half a copy of The Night Watchman’s Rules and a single warning: “Do not look for me.” Ten years later, I delivered a set of paper effigies to a family deep in the mountains and walked into that village myself. There are no ghosts to fight here, only countless old rules. Break one, and your name is taken, and you are erased. Beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance, a living person must still be “married off” every year. I have no peachwood sword, and no System. All I can do is make paper effigies, read shadows, and work out the meaning of each old rule. Because I’m gradually discovering that it’s never ghosts who eat people, but people themselves. And behind these collapsing rules, something is “eating the rules.” I don’t exorcise demons. I unravel rules.