The Red-Clad Embroiderer

During the Republican era, a blood-soaked case was buried in Rouge Alley, a water town in Jiangnan. Lü Lingxiao, a master embroiderer, refused to make a wedding gown for a ghost marriage arranged by a vile local tyrant. She was falsely accused of adultery, beaten to death before she could be caged and drowned, then tossed into a dry well at the end of the alley. As she died, she clutched half of an unfinished red embroidery, her resentment eating into her bones. From that night on, the sound of thread passing through cloth drifted through Rouge Alley every night. A shadow in red wandered by the well, and anyone who touched her embroidery met a bizarre, untimely death.

A century later, Lin Yan, an antique restorer searching for his family's heirloom embroidery patterns, moved into an old house in Rouge Alley. That very night, he found a pair of bloodstained red embroidered shoes beneath his bed. The twin lotus flowers stitched onto their toes had the exact same stitches as Lü Lingxiao's signature in the family genealogy. Then the strange incidents began: silver needles in the sewing basket darted about by themselves at night; the white wall seeped red threads that formed the character for