In the thirteenth year of the Republic of China, on the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, Lu Shen, a writer at the Shanghai Art Museum, followed a local text message and came to Zhifang Town, a water town in the south of the Yangtze River, to collect news.
The whole town makes a living by making paper figurines and funeral paper activities. On the lintel of Liuweng's paper shop in Zhenxi, there hangs a string of small paper figures tied around their necks with red threads, with different faces, swaying in the wind like hanging children. There is a century-old taboo in the town: you cannot look at the paper man at night, otherwise you will be seduced.
Lu Shen does not believe in ghosts and gods. But he discovered that in the past two years, three girls had disappeared from the town - 16-year-old Xiu'er, 15-year-old Axiu, and Liu Weng's distant niece Alian. The government said it was an accident or a loss, but the townspeople kept it secret.
Behind the string of paper figures, there is a dark web called "Lotus Seal". Zhifang Town is not the end, but the entrance. Lu Shen followed the clues, from the water town in the south of the Yangtze River to the Shanghai Concession, from the thin snow in the 13th year of the Republic of China to the war in the 19th year of the Republic of China.
This is a story about a missing girl, but also a story about silence - the sins covered up by ghosts and gods, the truth sealed by "rules", and the hearts of people who walk in the sun but rot in the dark.
Paper puppets don't steal souls. Those who steal souls are always humans.
