Northeast China: The Three Halls

Winter, 1935. Qingshigou, Fushun. Eight-year-old Cun Chaoguang was forced by his great-grandmother to down three bowls of strong liquor. In a single night, he crossed three trials: mountain, river, and fire, becoming the fourth generation of the Cun family’s spirit-medium disciples. The price was written in the family rules: he would not live past forty.

The Japanese dug into the three-hundred-year-old cave of Grandfather Hu San, and strange incidents began in the mine. Liu Jing, a young girl scraping by on the streets, stole a Japanese soldier’s purse. One sentence from him saved her, and from then on she held to one conviction: You saved me once, so I’ll repay you for a lifetime. Seventy years, four generations of spirit beings. The spirits do not judge right and wrong in the human world; they only care about good and evil. He only wanted to carry out the task his great-grandmother had entrusted to him: to preserve this ray of morning light.