Chronicles of the Wei River Dead: The Town That Fed the River

In the Republican-era town of Huaiyin, an unspoken taboo hangs over the community: when the locust trees bloom each season, the river must claim a life. Without fail, a death occurs every year—and without fail, the harvests remain plentiful and the weather fair. The truth behind the townsfolk's quiet prosperity is a chilling one: a centuries-old secret ritual of feeding the river to barter for the town's survival, with every outsider who strays in serving as nothing more than the next offering. When a floating corpse washes up on a sandbar, it first appears to be a sordid love crime—yet the reality is far more sinister, a substitution sacrifice meant to fulfill the annual debt. A former criminal investigator returns to his hometown to look into the case, but the further he probes, the more deeply he is gripped by dread. There are no ghosts at work here—only an entire town steeped in collective guilt. No demons deceive the world—only human hearts twisted into waking nightmares.