My name is Yun Suihan, and I am the seventh-generation heir to the Yun family’s paper-crafting lineage.

I run a struggling funeral parlor, strictly adhering to the ancestral creed: “Paper shall not ferry the wicked; thread shall not stitch a karmic debt.” My quiet life remained undisturbed until I crafted a “Soul-Guiding Effigy” for a young girl who met a wrongful end. After that, three things happened in quick succession:

[Shen Qingzhi, the captain of the Municipal Criminal Investigation Team, set her sights on me, claiming I was a prime suspect in a string of serial mu*ders.]

[My “Bound Puppet,” Yue Yao, began moving on its own, whispering ancient war ballads into the night.]

[A lady general clad in blood-stained silver armor began appearing in my dreams, repeating the same words over and over: “Suihan, do not be afraid.”]

****

The day Task Force Nine recruited me, Shen Qingzhi pressed the muzzle of her service pistol against the forehead of a paper effigy I had just finished.

“In your line of work,” she asked, “can you really craft something… alive?”

I kept my eyes down, smoothing out the deathly white rice paper in my hands.

“I can. I can even craft the General of the North—the one who was dismembered and sealed away three hundred years ago to suppress an evil omen.”

When I looked up, the shadow on the wall behind her was slowly drawing a broken blade from its waist.

Later, when the gates of the Netherworld Inn swung wide and ten thousand ghosts shrieked in the dark, Shen Qingzhi took a lethal curse meant for me. As blood soaked through her epaulettes, Yue Yao shattered inch by inch in my arms.

And finally, the figure in the darkness became clear: silver armor, red tassels—exactly as she appeared in my dreams.

She dropped to one knee and took my blood-stained hand, pressing a kiss against it like a brand.

“I, Yue Ling, have come late to protect my master.”

“In this life, wherever you open your shop—”

“—my blade shall stand guard.”

纸灵诡匠

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