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The Candle Stub
Teacher Zhou, knowing a poor boy reads by his school's candle-stubs, leaves one extra candle each night and sets out cakes blamed on mice. When Zhou grows old and poor, Wang—now a governor—returns in plain clothes to care for him to the end, saying all he has was lit by the teacher's stubs.
The Guardian Snake
The widow Chen lives alone; when a wicked youth climbs the wall to force her, a great snake from the beam winds his feet and drives him off. It guards by her stove each night; when she dies it vanishes, leaving a jade-like slough by the coffin, which the villagers hang in the shrine.
The Grateful Cow
Zhao Wu spends all his wages to redeem a sick cow bound for the butcher; it works his fields three years, then dies. Digging by its grave he finds a jar of silver with a cow's hoofprint at the bottom; the magistrate rules it his, and he uses half to free dozens of cows.
The Night Driver's Bridge
Old Sun drives nights and won't cross the river bridge between three and four — years ago a soaked man there asked 'do you go to the riverbed stop?' The bridge is where jumpers gather; now he takes the long way, steering troubled late-night fares toward lively places to win them one more dawn.
The Wreath Shop at Night
Xiao Zhao works nights at the wreath shop by the funeral home; at three a woman in a navy coat orders a wreath 'for my daughter' and carries it to the columbarium. She is the mother of a girl lost in a school-bus crash long ago, who ordered flowers daily in life and still comes after death.
The Eight Wilds Bestiary: The Borrowed Coat
A masterless old coat at a northern way-station walks by night, settling on travelers to finish the homeward road its dead master never walked.
The Winding Through the Wall
In Yong'an Li, a village-in-the-city, young Yan rents a thin-walled room. Each night at 3:33 a.m. a patient click-click-click of clock-winding seeps through from the sealed room next door — where Old Shen, a clock-mender, died years before. Yan, a hobbyist mender, leaves a working clock at the wall; by morning it is gone, yet a new tick-tock answers from within, and he learns to sleep.
Camera 3, Hua'an Mall
In Hua'an Mall, Yunqiao City, night guard Zhou worked twelve years of night shifts. Starting from his third year, every night at 2:07 AM, Camera 3 would show a figure that shouldn't exist — standing in the vacant corridor of the mall's third floor. There is no third floor. The third floor is a lie.