第一卷：无日之光——第一章：尸体压铸币，长寿仪式

Dajing, Seventh Year of Kaiping. The Waking of Insects.
Thunder rumbled deep inside the clouds, like a giant millstone grinding across the sky – muffled, oppressive. The unbroken spring rain hammered the bluestone road outside the capital, washing a sticky, cloying stench into the night.
Shen Zhui reined in his horse. The black stallion beneath him snorted uneasily, its hooves churning the mud in restless agitation. The horse had been raised beside the dungeons of the Dali Temple, accustomed to the smell of blood, yet now it cowered. The hairs on its neck stood on end. Shen Zhui reached down and touched the horse’s neck – his palm met a cold sweat.
Less than a hundred paces ahead, a lone red lantern swayed in the wind and rain. Its paper shade was already torn, the exposed frame like a row of dismembered ribs. Beneath the lantern light stood an old wooden building, its signboard crooked. Under the dim glow he could just make out three large black characters: Returning Place. The strokes were twisted, like writhing centipedes, oozing a nameless malevolence.
“Men walk the broad road; ghosts dwell at the Place of Return.”
Shen Zhui wiped the cold rain from his face. The copper bell at his waist – the Death Row insignia of the Dali Temple – hummed faintly and rapidly. A bell without a clapper, yet it would ring on its own where deathly qi gathered. Only the wardens of the Dali Temple could hear that “voice of the dead.”
He dismounted, pushed his bamboo hat lower, and shoved open the heavy, blackened wooden door.
Creak—
The warm air inside clashed with the cold wind outside, stirring a thin mist. Shen Zhui scanned the room. No lamps were lit inside; only a sliver of pale moonlight filtered in from the courtyard. The air was thick with a strange odor – rotting old timber, cheap face powder, and incense ash.
“Innkeeper, one room.” Shen Zhui’s voice was hoarse, like sandpaper on wood.
Light footsteps sounded from behind the counter. A woman emerged from the screen. She wore a bright red cross-collared ru skirt, startlingly vivid in that gloomy place, almost blinding. In her hand she carried a paper lantern, but the flame inside was a sickly green, casting her face in shifting shadows, making it pale as a freshly powdered sheet.
“Official, just passing through or staying the night?” Ajiao’s slender brows and eyes swept over Shen Zhui’s face. Her smile was colder than the rain outside. Her nails were painted black, in the green glow resembling the mouthparts of some insect.
Shen Zhui didn’t waste words. He took a bluish copper coin from his robe and slapped it onto the greasy counter with a crack.
Ajiao’s lazy expression froze the moment she saw the coin.
The coin’s edges were blackened, and faint reddish bloodstains seemed to seep into the verdigris. Most bizarrely, through the square hole in the center was wedged a small, dried human tongue. The tongue had shriveled into a dark purple lump, like a desiccated worm.
“Do you take this coin?” Shen Zhui stared at her, his right hand resting casually on the knife at his waist.
“Surely you jest, Official.” Ajiao reached out, but her fingertips jerked back halfway. “Guests must pay a ‘road toll’ to stay. But this… this is a Corpse-Press Coin. It’s meant to be placed in the mouth of the violently dead to guide their way. If a living person takes this coin, they may enter tonight, but they won’t leave come morning.”
“This coin was just pulled from the throat of the Dali Temple Minister.” Shen Zhui leaned closer, his voice low and icy. “The Minister died in the main hall, his robes immaculate, a smile on his face – but his tongue had been torn out and shoved into this very coin hole. Before his last breath, he stared north and mumbled three words: Re-turn-ing Place.”
Ajiao’s expression flickered. She was silent for a long moment, then took out a yellowed guest register from under the counter. Instead of opening it, she tapped the counter gently.
“North room on the second floor. The only empty one.” Ajiao looked at Shen Zhui, a strange pity in her eyes. “But remember, Official, we have one dead rule: Do not open the north window. Open it, and you will see the Wraith. ”
“After the hour of the Rat, no matter who calls you from outside – even if it’s your own mother – do not answer. If you keep the window shut, this room is yours. If you open it… your life will belong to someone else.”
Shen Zhui took the heavy, rusted copper key and smiled coldly. “I am from the Dali Temple Death Row. I’ve seen more wraiths than you’ve seen living guests in this inn.”
---
The second-floor corridor was dark and narrow. The floorboards groaned sharply underfoot, as if something was clawing from beneath. Every few paces, a faded talisman was pasted on the wall, the corners fluttering in the draft like a dead man’s breath.
Shen Zhui entered the north room. There was almost nothing inside – only an old canopy bed and a three-legged round table. He lit no lamp, walked straight to the bedside, sat down, and unbuckled the Soul-Calming Bell from his waist, placing it gently on the table.
The bell trembled on its own in the darkness, humming a soft, resonant zzzz.
Shen Zhui closed his eyes. In his mind rose the twisted, smiling face of the Dali Temple Minister. The old man had been trying to tell him something before he died. The Corpse-Press Coin came from a taboo Miao ritual called “Voicing the Death.” It was said that if you tore out a dead man’s tongue and plugged it with a coin, you could trap his soul in the living world for a short while and force him to speak the truth to whoever held that coin.
Then came the knocking.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Not at the door. At the window.
One, two, three. Slow and heavy, like muffled drumbeats. Shen Zhui’s eyes snapped open. He stared at the tightly shut wooden window. A yellowed seal was pasted across the lattice, and now it trembled violently.
“Shen Zhui… Shen Zhui…”
A familiar voice came from outside the window, laced with a scorched smell, like a throat burned dry. “I’m so cold… The fire… the fire won’t go out… Brother Shen… save me…”
Shen Zhui’s pupils contracted sharply. That was Lao Liu’s voice. Three years ago, during a salt smuggling case, Lao Liu had been trapped in a burning warehouse while shielding Shen Zhui from assassins. When Shen Zhui pulled him from the ashes, Lao Liu was already a charred cinder.
“Shen Zhui, open the window… I’m right outside… look at me, it’s me, Lao Liu…”
The knocking turned into frantic scratching, screeching and terrifying in the silent night. Shen Zhui’s hand pressed down on the Soul-Calming Bell, his knuckles white. He knew it was an illusion – the malevolent qi of this inn probing his mind, testing his courage.
But the scratching grew worse, until it became the sound of something heavy slamming against the wooden frame.
*BAM! *
The window lattice cracked open a slit. A putrid odor of earth mixed with burnt flesh flooded the room. Shen Zhui saw a blackened, skeletal hand – bare white bone showing through – wriggling through the gap, slowly, painstakingly, reaching inward.
“Ajiao said: open the window, see the Wraith,” Shen Zhui murmured with a low laugh, his eyes icy. “But she didn’t say whether a Wraith should kneel when caught by the Dali Temple!”
He rose abruptly, his right foot stamping the bluestone floor with a dull thud. With his left hand he pressed down on the Corpse-Press Coin, and with his right he reached out and grabbed that charred, ruined hand – and yanked. The sealed window tore open.
There was no Lao Liu outside. No wilderness.
Outside the window was a mirror.
A huge mirror set in dark, empty void. And reflected in that mirror was not this room, but the interrogation hall of the Dali Temple. The “Shen Zhui” in the mirror knelt in the hall, flanked by two Soul‑Snatching Messengers. And the “Dali Temple Minister” sitting high on the bench slowly lifted off his own head. From the broken neck, instead of blood, a writhing mass of tongues burst forth.
“Official… you opened the window after all.”
Ajiao stood at the door, her green lantern illuminating half her pale face, the other half lost in shadow. Grotesque.
Shen Zhui felt the cold touch in his palm. That charred hand, under the mirror light, had dissolved into a bloodstained yellow paper.
He grunted coldly. The Soul-Calming Bell at his waist let out a thunderous explosion!
“Dali Temple Death Row conducting an investigation – whether human or ghost, KNEEL!”
The Corpse-Press Coin in Shen Zhui’s hand burst into blue‑green phosphorescent flame. The tightly closed wooden door of the room began to seep thick blood. And in that eerie mirror, the “Minister” froze, then slowly turned around…