The Night Watchman of Xiangxi

On the eve of the Ghost Gate opening in 1999, forty-nine newborns died overnight in an old Xiangxi village. Twenty years later, Chen Jiu, the sole survivor, quits his city job and returns to the soon-to-be-demolished village to inherit his grandfather's neglected "night watch" trade. With a broken gong, a hundred ghosts make way; with a wooden clapper, yin and yang part ways. At first, Chen Jiu dismisses it as feudal superstition for tourists—until he sounds the third watch gong and sees his grandfather, dead for twenty years, standing at the alley's end with a sinister smile. Beneath the ancestral grave lies a mass burial pit; the sealed village hides embroidered shoes; paper figures perform opera at midnight; and a ghost market forbids the living. Chen Jiu realizes he has stepped into not only the mysterious world of Xiangxi shamanism but also a terrifying chess game spanning millennia. The blood flowing in his veins is the legendary "Hundred Household Fate" that can suppress all evils—destined to make him either sound the gong or summon souls. This is a tale of night watchmen, taboos, and legacy. There are more than 7.5 billion people in the world; where you cannot see, I am there.