(Opening quote: When the first crack appears in science's fortress, ancient fears lurking in the shadows spread like poisonous vines, silently twining around the roots of bloodlines until they are strangled.)
Wu Hao leaned against the hospital corridor wall, an unlit cigarette held between his fingers. The sharp, pungent smell of disinfectant mingled with the scent of herbal medicine wafting from the wards, forming a cold film inside his nostrils. He wore a faded black windbreaker, his eyes bloodshot—thirty-six hours without sleep. The intense investigative work and anxiety over his mother's critical condition had caused the usually upright police captain's shoulders to slump slightly.
The ward door swung open. The attending physician removed his mask, his expression darker than the sky outside. "Captain Wu," he handed over a stack of test reports, the edges crumpled from being gripped tightly. "Brain CT, blood biochemistry, organ function imaging... We've run every possible test. No viruses, no toxin residues, no organic lesions. But Mrs. Wu's multi-organ functions are deteriorating at an exponential rate."
"What does that mean?" Wu Hao's voice was hoarse as his fingertips traced the dense grid of parameters on the report. The numbers that once held answers now felt like unsolvable riddles.
"It's like a tree rotting from the core," the doctor's analogy was blunt and brutal. "The bark looks intact, but the inside is hollow. All we can do is use medication to sustain vital signs. We simply can't stem this... this loss of vitality."
Wu Hao snapped his head up, his gaze locking onto the doctor. "Could it be some rare genetic disorder? Or deliberate poisoning?" As a police officer, his instincts instinctively leaned toward human intervention, even if that suspicion seemed feeble in the face of the medical report.
The doctor shook his head, his tone unwavering. "We've ruled out every known genetic disorder. Toxicology screened for 230 common and rare toxins—all negative. Captain Wu, this exceeds the scope of modern medical understanding."
The words "beyond our understanding" struck Wu Hao like a sledgehammer. He turned and entered the ward. His mother lay in bed, eyes tightly shut. Her once rosy cheeks were now ashen and paper-thin, her breath faint and barely audible. He gently took her hand. Its icy touch made his heart clench. His gaze fell on her forearm—three pale purple bruises had grown larger since yesterday, their edges blurring and spreading like spiderwebs. They matched the marks on Chen Jianming's body described by Old Chen the coroner with startling precision.
Curse.
These two words were no longer mere ramblings from his great-uncle. They transformed into a cold, venomous snake, slithering up his spine, flickering its tongue to lick at his nerves. He had always believed in evidence, logic, and science, yet everything before him was slowly dismantling the foundation of his beliefs built over two decades.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Notifications from the family WeChat group flashed relentlessly, like a deathly incantation. He opened it to find 137 unread messages—the red number stung his eyes.
Aunt (Chen Jianming's mother): [Voice] "It's definitely the Dragon-Sealing Curse! Jianming died so mysteriously, and now my sister-in-law... I told you back then we shouldn't have agreed to dig up the well in the old house! That's where our ancestors sealed the curse! Last night I dreamed of Jianming, covered in blood, telling me the next victims would be us! You must find a way to stop this!" The voice message was laced with suppressed sobs, sending a chill down his spine.
Aunt (my uncle's wife): "@Everyone What good does crying do? We need solutions! I know a master from Dragon-Tiger Mountain who broke a curse for my niece last year—it worked like magic! But his fee is 88,000 yuan, plus offerings for ritual artifacts. Our Wu clan has twelve households—each chipping in just over 7,000 yuan shouldn't be too much, right? We can't just sit here waiting to die!"
Cousin Chen Lei (Chen Jianming's younger brother): "Bunch of lunatics! What era are we in to believe this nonsense? I say someone's stirring trouble to swindle Grandpa's inheritance! I've booked a flight to Phuket tomorrow. Out of sight, out of mind. You lot can squabble all you want."
Second Uncle Wu Wenhai: "@Chen Lei How dare you speak like that? Your mother is nearly crying herself to death! Xiao Hao is a police officer—why don't we hear his opinion?"
Reading these messages—filled with panic, selfishness, or numbness—Wu Hao felt suffocated. The curse wasn't just claiming lives; it was tearing apart this already fractured family, exposing humanity's most shameful side. He exited the group chat, took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down—he was Wu Hao, the captain of a homicide squad who had solved seventeen brutal murder cases. He couldn't let fear cloud his judgment.
If his mother's illness wasn't an act of God, then it must be man-made. But who could possibly create a "toxin" undetectable even by modern medicine? Who could pinpoint Chen Jianming and his mother—two seemingly unrelated family members—with such precision? Or could it be that some supernatural force truly existed, committing murder under the guise of a "curse"?
He pulled out his phone and scrolled to a long-dormant contact—Xia Jie, an associate professor at the Folklore Research Institute of the Municipal Normal University, specializing in Ming and Qing dynasty folk customs and taboo cultures. Three years ago, while investigating an antiquities theft case, he had enlisted her help deciphering a batch of ancient talismans. In his memory, she was a rational and perceptive scholar who never indulged in mysticism, instead excelling at unraveling folklore puzzles through historical and scientific lenses.
After a three-second hesitation, he dialed her number.
The Folklore Research Institute at Normal University was tucked away in an old building in the northwest corner of campus. Ivy climbing the walls had turned yellow, and the hallway smelled of a mix of old paper and dried herbs. Xia Jie's office was on the top floor. The moment Wu Hao pushed open the door, it felt like he had stepped into another world.
Bookshelves stretched from floor to ceiling, crammed with bound ancient texts and manuscripts. Walls hung with Nüxi masks, feng shui compasses, and a faded rubbing of the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Glass cabinets displayed clay figurines, bronze bells, and talismans of various materials. Behind the desk sat a woman whose presence seemed slightly incongruous with the rustic surroundings.
Xia Jie appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her long hair was pinned up in a simple bun with a wooden hairpin, revealing a smooth forehead and a pair of eyes as still as a pond. She wore a moon-white cotton-linen dress, a wolf-hair brush clamped between her fingers as she traced something on a sheet of Xuan paper. Hearing the sound, she looked up, her gaze clear but not sharp. "Officer Wu, please sit."
No unnecessary pleasantries—getting straight to the point suited Wu Hao's nature. He sat down on the wooden chair opposite her and proceeded to describe the scene symbols photographed on his phone, the bruises on his mother's arm, and the recent upheavals within his family. He deliberately avoided the word "curse," framing it instead as a "suspected series of injuries linked to folk customs."
Xia Jie listened quietly, her pen hovering over the paper, occasionally tapping lightly to leave tiny ink dots. Only after Wu Hao finished speaking did she slowly open her mouth, her voice clear and crisp like spring water: "The bruises on your mother's arm were pale purple, with jagged edges, and didn't fade when pressed, correct?"
Wu Hao froze abruptly: "How did you know?" He hadn't provided such detailed information.
Xia Jie didn't answer directly. Instead, she pulled a tattered, handwritten manuscript from the bookshelf. Its pages were yellowed and brittle, carefully bound with silk thread along the edges. The cover bore the title Chronicles of Qingzhu Village, written in elegant, feminine handwriting. She opened a page and slid it toward Wu Hao. "Look at this."
Wu Hao looked down. On the yellowed paper, patterns drawn in vermilion matched the symbols at the crime scene almost exactly. Beside them were dense vertical columns of traditional Chinese annotations. On the right side of the page was a small portrait. The figure's arm bore a pale purple bruise identical to his mother's, labeled with four characters: "The Dragon-Binding Curse Begins to Manifest."
"This isn't ordinary superstition, nor a simple imitation of a vendetta," Xia Jie said with the scholar's characteristic rigor, tinged with an almost imperceptible gravity. "This is the 'Dragon-Binding Curse,' a vicious curse originating from the late Qing Dynasty. Legend traces it to a village in western Hunan called 'Green Bamboo Village.'"
She paused before continuing, "According to the historical records I've compiled, Qingzhu Village had long relied on witchcraft and mining for survival. Hidden within the village lay a high-purity rare earth mineral vein, a strategic resource rare at the time. A century ago, the village chief betrothed his daughter to your ancestor, Wu Chengye, on the condition that Wu relocate his entire clan to Qingzhu Village. Together, they would guard the mineral vein and the village's sacred treasure—a 'Blood-veined Wood' statue capable of stabilizing the vein's energy. Yet Wu later betrayed the marriage pact, conspiring with outsiders to massacre Qingzhu Village and seize both the Blood-veined Wood and control of the mineral vein. Before dying, the village shaman cast a blood curse: "May the Wu lineage suffer through generations—male heirs meet untimely ends, and female kin waste away in early death."
A chill shot down Wu Hao's spine. He had never heard this hidden family history. His grandfather's generation only spoke of ancestors as "heroes who cleared the wilderness," never mentioning the bloodshed behind it. Could that faceless wooden carving be the so-called "Blood-veined Wood statue"?
"Does this curse follow any rules?" Wu Hao grasped the key point—any "threat" with patterns was easier to break than indiscriminate slaughter.
"Yes." Xia Jie pointed to a line in the document. "The records mention 'arranging teeth in sequence and burying according to direction.' 'Sequence of teeth' doesn't refer to age, but to the correspondence between family members' birthdays and the twelve cardinal directions of Qingzhu Village. 'Burying according to direction' means the victim's location must correspond to one of the twelve critical sites in Qingzhu Village at that time—the altar, mine entrance, ancient well, and so on."
Wu Hao instantly recalled that Chen Jianming's death site—the abandoned Folk Culture Village—was precisely built ten years ago by the government under the "Ancient Village Restoration Project," modeled after the Qingzhu Village ruins! And his mother had attended a folk culture fair there just last week, falling ill shortly after returning!
"Who's next? Where will it happen?" Wu Hao's voice was dry as his fingertips unconsciously clenched the hem of his shirt. If Xia Jie's words were true, this "curse" functioned like a precise killing program, complete with a clear timeline and roadmap.
Xia Jie shook her head, her expression complex. "Too many historical records are missing. The original layout of Qingzhu Village has been lost, so I can't make precise predictions. Moreover, I need the birth dates of all living direct descendants of the Wu family to map them to the twelve directions and identify the next potential victim." She paused before adding, "Also, the curse isn't unbreakable. The records state, 'To lift the curse, seek the life-bound object; repay blood with blood, repay vows with vows.' The life-bound object here should be the blood-patterned wooden statue stolen all those years ago. But the exact method of 'repayment' remains unspecified."
Wu Hao's heart sank, yet a faint glimmer of hope ignited within him. At least, this wasn't an unsolvable death trap.
As they left the institute, dusk had already fallen. Wu Hao had barely settled into the car when his phone rang. The caller ID displayed his uncle, Wu Wenyan.
"Xiao Hao, how is your mother doing?" Wu Wenyan's voice was gentle, tinged with just the right amount of concern. "The family is in an uproar. I suggest we gather for dinner at the ancestral home tonight to discuss a plan together. We can't just drift apart like scattered sand. You should come too. You're a cop—everyone trusts you. We need your input."
Wu Hao's fingers tightened slightly around the steering wheel. The ancestral home—that place sealing the family's dark secrets, burying the source of the curse—now felt like a gaping maw, waiting for prey to walk right into its trap. Was this family gathering truly about banding together for warmth, or was someone using the guise of "discussing countermeasures" to seek the curse's next sacrifice?
Staring at the word "Uncle" on his phone screen, he recalled Wu Wenyuan's eerily calm gaze at the funeral, remembered how swiftly his eyes had scanned the evidence bag. Doubts began to swirl within him.
"Alright, I'll be there." Wu Hao finally agreed. He had to go—not only to protect the potential next victim, but also to uncover the hidden secrets behind this century-old curse. Was someone using the curse as a cover for murder?
The car started up and headed toward the old mansion. Streetlights flickered on one by one outside the window, casting long, sinister shadows across the ground like claw marks. Wu Hao knew the family tombstone had already been quietly erected. He had to overturn this altar hidden in darkness before the next name was carved onto it.