The Night Watch Ledger

There are only three rules for night watch duty. The rules take effect only for whoever has taken over the post. The rules can be followed, altered, or added to, but never repealed. Change one rule, and a new breach will open somewhere else. Where it opens is anyone's guess. When Chen Zhao took over the Night Watch Register passed down by his ancestors, he thought it was just a formality: sign his name, keep watch over the Chen Family Ancestral Hall in Yunxi County, and leave once his clan found someone else to take the job. On a whim, he lit the eternal lamp in the hall. A line of writing immediately seeped onto the first page of the register: The eternal lamp must not be lit. If it is, someone must come to replace it. Only then did he realize that for three generations, the Chen family hadn't been tending the ancestral incense. They'd been keeping an account. Keep watch, and all is well; break the rules, and a debt is incurred. And the debt isn't charged to him, but to the people he cares about most. When he was seven, his mother once entered the ancestral hall and never came out. His second uncle had only said: Your mother asked the same question back then. On the last page of the register was his great-grandfather's handwriting, seven words: Don't look for your mother. Find out who made the rules.