O Guardião da Vila e a Esposa no Caixão

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I am known in the village as the great fool. Of course, that's what outsiders say. Those who know the truth call me…the Guardian of the Village! Even more laughable is what my grandfather claims: that I am a once-in-a-millennium prodigy, destined by fate to possess a "red origin." By this, he means I am someone who will rise in the world thanks to women—in other words, to put it bluntly, a born freeloader of the highest order. In a way, that's not a bad thing. But I never imagined that the woman I would rely on…would not even be human!

On my third birthday, I was even required to choose a wife in the graveyard…

But all of this began on the day I was born.

I was born in a small village at the foot of Mount Changbai. That day, in the middle of a bright noon, the sky darkened in an instant as if it were midnight. The entire village was swallowed by darkness. After their initial panic and shouts, the villagers hurried to light kerosene lamps in every house. The dim glow barely managed to illuminate the village, but under the wavering lamplight, everything appeared even more eerie.

This sudden, unnatural phenomenon terrified everyone. They all intended to seek out the village chief, the pillar of the community, to ask what on earth was happening.

What devilry was this? How could broad daylight turn so pitch-black?

But as soon as the villagers stepped outside, they saw countless shifting shadows flickering in the yellow lamplight seeping from every home. There were so many of them. These shadows had the