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The Rabbit Spirit
A poor hillside farmer, A-shu, spares a luminous white rabbit that visits his failing crops. The creature tends his fields through the season, but the greedy village headman hunts it for reward. A-shu shelters it and loses his harvest; yet the next spring, new white rabbits appear. A tale of kindness repaid and greed thwarted.
The Oil Press Ledger
At a riverside oil mill in a fading township, old master Xu is asked to press a strange load of tung seeds by a soft-spoken stranger. Hidden among the seeds is a silver lock tied to a girl who vanished twenty years ago. The visitor proves to be her brother, still chasing the truth his dying mother could not release. Bound by the mill's old code of silence, Xu must decide how much of the past to surrender — and what a ledger can never hold.
The Empty Coffin
Ke, the master coffin-maker of Qinghe Town, trusts only his hands and his late teacher's craft. One rainy autumn night an unmarked empty coffin appears at his shop gate, bearing his teacher's secret chisel mark. A knock sounds from within. What Ke uncovers ties back to an unsolved wrong from eleven years past and a debtor who never returned home, leaving a quiet, lingering echo rather than an answer.
The Butterfly Spirit
Old Zhou lives alone in a cottage at the foot of the hills after his wife's passing. A grey-blue butterfly with a pale gold edge begins to visit him each spring, keeping him company through quiet chores and small warnings. Year after year, the gentle spirit and the stubborn old man share a wordless bond, leaving a warm trace that lingers long after the wings are gone.
The Grass Spirit
A stubborn farmer in a southern mountain village battles a clump of grass by the spring that regrows each dawn. One autumn night the Grass Spirit appears and reveals the grass keeps the village's water pure. They strike a pact of mutual respect, sparing a small wild corner, leaving a quiet, lingering peace.
The Tale at the Bottom of the Chest
In a riverside teahouse, the storyteller Cui Jiu performs oral tales but never finishes one — The Sunken Chest, of a peddler vanished twenty years ago. A silent outsider comes each night to hear it, and Cui Jiu reads in him a familiar scar and tune. He weaves the truth into his telling, sends the man to an old ferryman, and keeps a half-jade token. Some debts, he decides, are best left half-told.
The Paper Child
He Shouming, a lantern maker of forty years, mends a drifting revolving lantern brought by a boatman mourning his drowned brother. Between its paper layers he finds a small paper child, a strand of hair, and a silver bell — a grief the brother never spoke. He restores the lamp and returns it to the river, yet something small seems to linger in his own shop's lamplight.
The Spider Spirit
An old barrel-hooper lives alone in his grandfather's house. A grey spider takes the corner; he names it Ash, and over the years the two keep each other company—the spider closing the draft, catching him when he slips. His daughter asks him twice to leave for the city; he stays. In spring a small, crooked new web appears beside the old one.