The Soul Ferry

After death, souls sink into the Sea of Returning Souls, carrying the obsessions they could not let go of in life. Seven ferry crossings lie across the sea, each washing them clean in turn until they can be sent into reincarnation free of all burdens.

Shen Zhiwei is a washer at the Seventh Crossing, the last stop, where the most stubborn obsessions are treated. A white lamp shines, the obsession is stripped away, and the job is done.

That is, until a soul named Zhou Jiming arrives. He clutches a water-wrinkled photograph of the person he failed to save. When the white lamp shines on him, his obsession does not loosen; it tightens. It has grown into his soul.

For the first time, Shen Zhiwei hesitates. A crack appears on the back of his hand.

To unravel this deadlock, he uses the forbidden power of "Thousand Bodies Crossing" to enter parallel lives within the soul and see what might have happened "if a different choice had been made." Three paths, three endings, three kinds of pain: not one of them is right.

Then he does something no washer would ever do: he stops washing.

"Your pain isn't filth. It's proof that you lived."

After that, the heirs of wealthy families, border-town doctors, mute painters, and empty female powerhouses arrive one after another, each carrying an obsession that cannot be washed away. Shen Zhiwei accompanies them into their parallel lives, witnessing the cost of obedience, the desolation of escape, and the emptiness of severed ties. With every person he accompanies, another crack appears in his soul.

The lamplighter Bai Zhu warns him: if you keep breaking apart, you'll forget who you are.

And a deeper crisis is brewing beneath the sea: fragments of every obsession washed away over thousands of years are awakening, and the Sea of Returning Souls' ancient order is on the verge of collapse.

Shen Zhiwei will eventually discover that he, too, is a person in fragments.