The light from the white cloth lanterns stretched to the edge of the forest, and paper figures in scarlet robes swayed towards both sides of the road, standing like welcoming guests.

The paper figure holding the lantern grinned and said, "Esteemed guests, there's no need to be afraid. This is a welcome for honored guests. In a moment, they will nod to you. If you wish to respond, you may. If not, simply pretend you don't see them."

Even without his words, I'd noticed the changes in the red-robed paper figures.

Their faces were inlaid with living human eyes. When I walked parallel to one, the paper figure would open its eyes and give me a slight nod.

Without making a sound, I reached out to touch one of the paper figures. Before my hand could reach its red robe, the guide said, "Don't touch! I know what you want to ask. Its skin is made of paper, but inside are the bones of the living."

"If you poke it open and release the yin energy inside, it'll be difficult to restore."

"It wasn't easy for them to survive, you know!"

I asked tentatively, "What about you? Are you also a dead man dressed in paper?"

"Of course!" the guide said. "You can tell by looking at my neck."

Only then did I see a tear in the paper on the guide's neck, revealing the bone beneath.

The guide chuckled. "Paper is a wonderful thing! It can write, it can draw, and it can kill!"

"Do you know about maobian paper used to cover faces?"

Using maobian paper (rough-edged paper) to cover faces was a method of execution used in ancient prisons. Jailers would tie prisoners to a stool and cover their faces with water-soaked maobian paper. After several layers, the prisoner would suffocate to death.

When the jailer peeled off the blood-soaked paper, there wouldn't be a single drop of blood on the dead man's body, and no one would know how that person died in prison.

Before I could speak, the guide continued, "We all have a piece of blood-soaked paper on us. Heh heh… you should look carefully the next time you use paper. A single spot on white paper might be a fragment of someone's bone."

As he spoke, the guide led me to a riverbank. "Go on. I've done my job by bringing you here."

I glanced at the river water, and the guide pointed to the offering table by the river. "There's an incense burner and yellow paper. You should know what to do."

As soon as he finished speaking, the guide silently retreated to the edge of the forest. "Don't get it wrong. If you do, there will be three more paper figures in this forest."

When I turned to look for the guide, he was gone. Only the white lantern was still flickering and slowly retreating into the forest.

Mo Caiwei whispered, "I think there's something wrong with this river."

"It's not the river that's the problem, it's the offering table in front of us," I said in a low voice. "Has anyone heard of a paper effigy maker?"

Among the figures in the funeral business, the paper effigy maker was one of the most difficult to deal with. Legend had it that a true paper effigy maker could not only summon ghosts, but even kill with a single piece of paper.

I had heard a legend that someone had accidentally offended a paper effigy maker, and as a result, that family felt someone watching them from the roof in the middle of the night.

As long as they opened their eyes without turning on the lights, they could always see someone facing away from the roof, chuckling coldly.

That family hired many shamans to investigate, and they could all see the person on the roof, but no one could send him away. The family even took down the beams of the house, but they still couldn't get rid of the person on the roof.

Finally, someone told the family to think about whether they had offended anyone. Only then did they remember that they hadn't paid for a pair of paper child attendants.

Originally, they could have settled the matter by bringing two bottles of wine and a few pounds of meat to apologize.

But that family was used to being domineering. They brought people to smash the paper effigy maker's shop and beat him up.

As a result, that night, when the family was sleeping with their child, they felt like their arm had crushed the child. When they turned on the lights, they found that their child had turned into a paper child attendant, with their hands folded, waiting for an adult to carry them.

The family was almost scared out of their minds. That night, they ran to the paper effigy maker to kowtow and apologize. However, the paper effigy maker's house was already empty. The family's child never returned, but two paper figures knocked on the door every night until the family died of torment. That was the end of the story.

When I heard Jiu Gui tell this story, I felt sorry for the family: How could they kill someone's child over a dispute between adults?

Jiu Gui told me: When a sorcerer's skills become great, they can be righteous or evil. It's common to see people killing entire families over a disagreement. If you want to survive in the jianghu (martial world), you either can't offend anyone, or you have to be more ruthless than anyone else, so that people don't dare to touch you.

Jiu Gui's words were probably about not using good and evil to measure people in the jianghu, because the jianghu was never a place of black and white.

After listening to me, Mo Caiwei said, "I've also heard of paper effigy makers, but I've never seen their skills. There's no one in Paper Figure Village who knows how to make paper effigies. Moreover, when people in the village are buried, they never use paper offerings. Instead, the painters of human blood lineage draw a few paintings and burn them as paper offerings."

I couldn't help but frown, but Bo Pi said in a low voice, "Do you believe me?"