Reborn in 1975: I Have a Yin-Yang Scale

A yin-yang scale weighs the souls of the living and the grievances of the dead.

Lin Yue returned to the 1970s, when you needed ration coupons to buy cloth or meat, and became an educated youth sent to the Great Khingan Mountains in Northeast China.

To survive in the remote mountains at forty degrees below zero, he became a black-market trader who moved between the worlds of the living and the dead.

He logged deep in the mountains, trading the baleful energy of lightning-struck wood for old Soviet hunting rifles; dealt on the black market, trading a century-old wild ginseng plant pledged by a fox spirit for a permit to return to the city and stacks of ten-yuan bills; fished for bodies beneath the ice in winter, stripping the water ghosts of their grudges; and trafficked in Qing-dynasty funerary treasures dredged from the river.

“In this age, the bold get rich while the timid starve. Whether it’s a commune official or a household guardian spirit, once they’re on my scale, they play by my rules, Lin the Trader’s rules!”