Curses

Every night, Chen Youlan’s grandmother kowtows backward before a red-draped Buddha, cursing the family whose prosperity was bought with her blood.

When Grandma dies smiling and Youlan is chosen to inherit the ritual, the old house begins exposing every bargain, every stolen life, and the true firstborn hidden behind the family’s lies.

To survive until dawn, Youlan must decide whether the weeping statue is a god, a demon, or merely the patient judge of a debt generations in the making.

I run a science-debunking channel.

I’m also a Taoist priest.

Every day, I livestream ways to expose feudal superstition for what it is.

One day, a young woman asked me to help sever a toxic romantic entanglement.

The next day, her boyfriend was dead.

In remote mountain villages, strange things happen and stranger tales are told.

Corpse retrieval, spirit possession, talisman water, the paper-effigy craft, the Temple of the Five Immortals, rice divination and crossing into the underworld, the flood dragon’s run from Yin Mountain…

I walk beyond the crowds and the mundane world, living through one hidden, uncanny event after another–things ordinary people could never glimpse.

Now, I will tell them to you.

When our village reservoir dries up, several skeletons and eighty-eight strangely shaped stone Buddhas emerge from the mud.

Grandma warns everyone never to touch the statues.

But after my cousin dies by smashing his own head against one of them, I uncover a century-old injustice—and a vengeful spirit determined to make every descendant of the Lin family pay.

The auspicious hour had arrived. The wedding rites were complete, yet the bride remained kneeling in her blood-red wedding dress.

A gust of wind lifted her bridal veil, revealing a woman’s half-rotted head. Her lifeless eyes stared straight at me.

I tried to flee, but an icy hand clamped tightly around my wrist.

“Where are you going, my lady?” the wedding attendant asked with a smile. “It’s time for the banquet.”

Dark purple corpse spots stood out starkly on his powder-caked wrist.

So none of the guests at the wedding banquet were alive.

Myself included.

Jiang Li starts in hell, in a mental hospital, her money embezzled by her stepmother, and her boyfriend taken away by her stepsister. Now, she is unexpectedly caught up in a supernatural side quest, confronting the bizarre head-on…

A strange voice filled with malice says: “Please select the most important thing in your life.”

With sincere eyes, Jiang Li replies, “Family! Without them, there would be no me now!”

“Now officially entering the first side quest: Horror Anniversary. The mortality rate is extremely high, please prepare, chosen one.”

In the side quest, there are sounds of meat being chopped in the middle of the night, a toilet constantly flushing, and a long-haired woman hiding under the bed…

Is it a rhythm to kill? Hah, Jiang Li laughs instead of being scared. She doesn’t know if she will die, but they are definitely doomed. Facing the big screen, Jiang Li gently makes a “shh” gesture to her family. “My dear family, I wish you—Happy Death Anniversary.”

The Noble Consort resorted to every conceivable means to secure a baby boy, plotting to pass off another woman’s son as her own so she could regain the emperor’s favor.

On the day she gave birth, she sent her men to a secluded village, where they murdered a young couple and abducted their swaddled infant.

I survived by hiding inside a rice vat.

But what she didn’t know was that the village was called Half-Ghost Village.

Once its residents turned fifty, they began aging in reverse.

The baby her men had taken was my Great-grandfather.

I was dragged into a horror game instance and forced to listen to a Siren sing.

I took off my hearing aids and stared blankly at the Siren baring its fangs.

“Sorry, sorry. I may not be able to hear, but I can definitely sleep!”

After a peaceful night’s rest, I safely survived the first day.

In the middle of the second night, someone quietly put my hearing aids back on me.

But then…

“Huh? I forgot to charge my hearing aids. Good thing I brought spare batteries.”

The Siren stared at me in silence, its expression dark and sinister.

Later, a group of Sirens gathered around the side of the ship, planning to pick someone to attack.

I performed CPR while playing “Most Dazzling Ethnic Style.”

The terrifying cruise ship turned into a blistering-hot party.

That day, every Siren sang off-key…

My rich, pretty roommate had a boyfriend who was five-foot-three, weighed 187 pounds, and always had a greasy shine on his face.

She guarded against me at every turn, terrified I had designs on him.

I told her her boyfriend was a pig, and she snapped that I was just calling the grapes sour because I couldn’t have them.

But what she didn’t know was that her boyfriend really was a pig.

I transmigrated into the villainess’s… apple.

That’s right, the Poison Apple from Snow White’s stepmother.

On the very first day after transmigrating, I cried because I was so ugly.

Damn it, half red and half green.

Maybe because I was crying too loudly, the Magic Mirror next door cautiously poked me.

“Um… actually, I think you’re the most… special… apple in this world.”

I paused, then glanced at his slightly reddened mirror surface.

“…Thanks, Comfort Hero.”