In the 1980s, I Opened a Pawnshop for the Dead

When Shen Qiutang wakes up, she finds herself back in a mud-brick house in 1985. Her father is bedridden on the kang, her mother is the subject of the whole village's gossip, and a line of awful relatives is crouched outside, waiting to watch them make fools of themselves.

No one knows that this girl, cursed as a jinx, was the last inheritor of the mystic arts in her previous life.

Her grandfather left her a dusty shop that deals in yin: it takes people, not objects, and accepts yin rather than money.

The thug next door is possessed in the dead of night and comes begging for her help. A factory director in the city loses his soul and begs her on his knees. Even the county's most prominent figure secretly slips her a birth-date chart.

She counts on her fingers, then smiles. This fate? I'll take it.

From reading fortunes and judging destinies to warding homes and collecting yin, she starts out in a shabby pawnshop, builds her fortune, and buries, one by one, everyone who once trampled her family.

And then there's the old debt her grandfather left behind. She waits for the debtor to come knocking, ready to settle every last bit, principal and interest alike.

The mystic arts are a lucrative trade in any era, especially the 1980s.