Forbidden Village

During the summer when I was eight, I returned to my grandfather's house and heard a woman crying in the east wing every night. Grandpa said: if you hear tapping on the window calling your name at midnight, never answer. Don't step a single step into that east wing door. I didn't listen. Through the crack in the door, I saw a hemp rope hanging from the beam, messy footprints on the floor, and a pair of embroidered shoes—toes pointing outward, placed side by side behind the door, as if someone had dressed neatly and sat there waiting for twenty years. Grandpa said it wasn't a ghost, but a 'debt.' Later I learned that a woman in a red wedding dress had hanged herself in that room, and she wasn't found until half a month later, leaving not a single word. And her death was just the entrance to all the secrets of this land. Paper-folding craftsmen, corpse retrievers, puppet performers, yin walkers—five nearly lost special professions guarding five doors, locking away a bride submerged at the bottom of the water. My name is Chen Luo'an, the sixth-generation descendant of the Chen family. Eleven copper coins have been collected, and the door is about to open. The promise made by my ancestor three hundred and sixty years ago must be fulfilled by me.