Act One: Hitting a Dead End in the Library Basement
On the third basement level of National Taiwan University's main library one afternoon, the air was saturated with the dry smell of old paper and the dehumidifier running nearby. Rows of metal bookshelves cast long shadows beneath the ghastly fluorescent lights. The entire place was silent except for the occasional rustle of turning pages.
Zhang Wei and A-Xiang sat at a wooden table by the window. Piled across it were thick microfilm archives of old newspapers, early handbooks of Taiwan's administrative divisions, and yellowed land-registration census records. Each of them had a laptop open in front of him, the screens flickering with densely packed search windows.
A-Xiang rubbed his sore eyes and let out a heavy sigh, leaning back against his chair. “Senior, we've been digging through this stuff for three whole afternoons. From the Japanese-era Aboriginal Land Control Lists to the postwar Nantou County mountain-town gazetteers, we've gone through every digital file we could find. And what did we get?”
Zhang Wei pushed up his glasses and stared at the blank search results on the screen in front of him, his brow furrowed. He said nothing.
“Absolutely nothing.” A-Xiang gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. “Other than that vague ‘official document on the collective relocation of a village due to geological disasters’ from twenty years ago, everything related to a place called ‘Mistveil Village’—household registrations, land-ownership records, even road-construction records from back then—has been marked either ‘destroyed’ or ‘location not found.’ If Lin Yu-ching hadn't cried herself raw that day, I really would have thought the name was just some bored internet troll's made-up urban legend.”
Zhang Wei picked up the cold coffee on the table and took a sip. The chill of the liquid cleared his head a little. He looked at the incomplete official document on his laptop and slowly began to speak.
“No. The fact that it says ‘location not found’ is exactly what makes it so strange.” Zhang Wei lowered his voice. “Even if an ordinary village were abandoned after a landslide, land reclassification would still leave behind cadastral numbers or codes for Indigenous reserved land. But Mistveil Village's records weren't labeled ‘abandoned.’ They were completely ‘erased,’ as if someone with the highest level of clearance had wiped them out. But…”
He abruptly changed course and gave a helpless, bitter smile. “Senior's right. Without any concrete evidence—and when we can't even find official geographic coordinates—what can we do to help Yu-ching? If we take this empty-handed nothing to Professor Chen, he'll tear us apart. Yu-ching might even think we're just indulging our morbid curiosity.”
A-Xiang fell silent for a moment. Watching the sky outside gradually darken, he said quietly, “Then… are we really supposed to let Yu-ching face that goddamn twenty-five-year curse on her own? She's been doing worse and worse at school these past few days. Her face was as pale as paper in class today, and she could barely hold her pen.”
Zhang Wei did not answer. He shut off his laptop screen and looked at the solemn reflection of his own face. Reason told him that Professor Chen Po-han was right—there were no ghosts and gods in this world, and no curse that could cross through time and space. It was all just collective delusion and psychological suggestion caused by the lack of information in a remote mountain region.
And yet, whenever he remembered the almost desperate fear in Lin Yu-ching's eyes, a thorn remained lodged in his heart.
Act Two: Fleeing After Midterms
Before they knew it, it was the end of October. The autumn wind swept through Taipei's streets, carrying with it a trace of real chill.
Across National Taiwan University, every department was scrambling through midterms. For Lin Yu-ching, the exams of the past few days had been a long, painful ordeal. Sitting in the exam room and staring at the physics and calculus formulas that should have been familiar, she found her mind completely blank. She watched helplessly as the ink on her exam paper seemed to blur into the passage of time, each second carrying her closer to her 25th birthday.
The instant the bell rang to signal the end of the exam, Lin Yu-ching bolted from the classroom as if she were running for her life.
Back at the dorm, her roommates Fen and Ling were enthusiastically packing their luggage, preparing to spend the long weekend vacationing in Kenting.
“Yu-ching, you're really not coming to the beach with us? Sun, sand, bikinis! Midterms are over—it's time to go crazy and relax!” Fen tugged her suitcase zipper closed and turned to persuade her.
Lin Yu-ching stood in front of her closet, silently stuffing several plain-colored outfits into an old suitcase. Her movements were mechanical, and her voice was hoarse. “No… I have to go back to my old home village in Nantou.”
“You're going home again?” Ling stopped what she was doing and looked at her with concern. “Yu-ching, you always look awful whenever you're about to go back. And every time we ask, you get all mysterious. Are you sure you don't need us to come with you? If something's wrong at home, we can help you figure it out.”
“No… thank you.” Lin Yu-ching forced a smile that looked worse than crying. “There are some things at home I have to take care of.”
Seeing Lin Yu-ching looking utterly lost, as if she were carrying the weight of the entire world, Fen and Ling exchanged a glance. Their stomachs were full of questions and worry, but in the end, all they could do was sigh helplessly and remind her to be careful on the way.
Act Three: The Village of Fog and Silence
She took a bus from Taipei, transferred to a battered local bus, and finally walked along an old mountain road overgrown with weeds and nearly buried beneath landslides. By the time Lin Yu-ching's feet touched that land, hemmed in on every side by mountains, night had fallen completely.
This was Mistveil Village.
There were no city neon lights, no roar of traffic. The entire village was smothered beneath thick mountain mist, and the air was permanently steeped in the smell of rotting earth and damp moss. Old wooden houses were scattered along the mountainside in an orderly disorder, resembling the skeletons of enormous beasts crouched on the slope beneath the dim moonlight. Though remote, this was not some savage wilderness cut off from the modern world. At the entrance to the village stood the Yong'an General Store, its peeling paint flaking from the walls and its glass shelves packed with every kind of expired snack and canned food. On the street corner was even a little bar called Drunken Dream, its dim neon tubes buzzing with electricity. Every so often, a few middle-aged villagers could be seen sitting in the corner, their heads bowed over cheap hard liquor. Behind the village stood a small, poorly equipped clinic. Its doctor was a man who stayed wrapped in a white coat year-round, his eyes always avoiding everyone else's, while the counter was stocked with every kind of sedative.
Yet these modern facilities brought no vitality to Mistveil Village. Instead, they only accentuated its bizarre absurdity.
The villagers here seemed like wind-up toys programmed in advance. When buying cigarettes at the general store, you would see their mouths forcibly pull into a standard curve—a stiff mask of a smile that never reached the eyes, as if the social expression had been completed through muscle memory. Deep in their eyes, however, lay pools of dead water. When they happened to meet on the street, they exchanged mechanical greetings. Their words sounded warm enough, but their voices were as flat as if they were reciting scripture.
Even the drunk patrons in the bar never shouted or burst into tears. They merely sat in silence, lifting their glasses to their lips and mechanically chewing peanuts, the crisp sounds making one's heart seize. The clinic was even more oppressive. There were no moans of pain, only the teeth-chilling rustle of medical records being turned.
Everyone here, young and old alike, had long since learned to use this false warmth on the surface to conceal the numbness and terror buried deep within them—their terror of the deadline awaiting them at twenty-five. This was not life. It was a long, orderly funeral, and everyone at that funeral was performing their own final rite.
Lin Yu-ching dragged her heavy suitcase along the stone-paved road. Its wheels clattered sharply—click-clack, click-clack—across the silent village street, jarringly conspicuous in the dead of night.
A few villagers passed by from time to time. They carried dim kerosene lamps and wore old cloth clothes washed so many times that their colors had faded white. When they saw Lin Yu-ching, none of them spoke. They did not even slow their steps. They merely turned their heads slightly and cast her a cold glance with hollow, numb eyes devoid of the slightest trace of human warmth, then vanished into the dense fog like ghosts.
This was daily life in Mistveil Village. Its people were alive, yet seemed already completely dead.
Lin Yu-ching hurried back to the old house deep in the village. The wooden door gave a sharp creak, and the old yellow incandescent bulb on the ceiling swayed as it flickered to life, casting a murky halo across the room.
In the living room, her parents sat beside the wooden table, drinking bitter herbal tea. When they saw Lin Yu-ching return, neither showed much joy. Her mother merely raised her cloudy eyes and looked her up and down, her voice so calm it was almost cruel.
“You're back? City life is noisy all day long. It's better here in the quiet village, isn't it? Tomorrow, go pray at the ancestral shrine and tell the mountain god you'll be back before you turn twenty-five.”
Lin Yu-ching slammed her suitcase onto the floor. The fear and anger that had been building in her chest for so long finally found an outlet. She looked at her parents, their expressions numb, as if they had accepted the judgment of fate long ago, and her voice began to tremble sharply.
“Dad! Mom! Are you done yet? What century are you living in? People outside have already gone into space and developed quantum mechanics, and you're still believing in this ridiculous curse! What do you mean, I'll die if I don't come back before I'm twenty-five? That's complete nonsense! You two have been trapped here your whole lives, so now you want to lock me in this godforsaken place too?”
At the word “curse,” her father’s hand jerked violently around his teacup, splashing tea across the tabletop. He raised his head, a twisted mixture of fear and fury appearing on his deeply wrinkled face.
“Shut up! What do you know? The rules our ancestors left behind were bought with blood! Anyone who dares defy them will die!”
“I don't believe it!” Lin Yu-ching's eyes turned red, and tears burst from them. “How could science possibly be wrong? Professor Chen was right. There are no ghosts and gods in this world. All of this is just—”
“Professor Chen? What the hell does that professor know?” Her mother suddenly cut her off, her voice trembling hysterically. “He doesn't know a damn thing! Back then… your brother said the same thing!”
The air in the living room dropped to freezing in an instant.
At the mention of her brother, Lin Yu-ching's voice stopped dead, and her face went deathly pale.
Act Four: Her Brother's Phantom and the Message Never Sent
Her brother, Lin Yu-sheng. Brilliant and gifted from childhood, he had excelled in school, earned admission to a top university in northern Taiwan, and, after reaching adulthood, openly scoffed at the family's ancient taboo.
Two years earlier, in another late autumn just like this one, her brother had approached his 25th birthday. The village elders had already ordered him to return to Mistveil Village to pay respects to the ancestors before his birthday. But over the phone, her brother had laughed with absolute confidence and said to their father, “Dad, I'm doing just fine in Taipei. It's the age of science—do you really still believe this stuff? I definitely won't be coming back this year. I want to see what it can do to me.”
At the time, Lin Yu-ching had been afraid, but deep down, she had also secretly envied her brother's rebelliousness and courage. She had wanted so badly for him to break the curse and prove to everyone in the village that the outside world was the real one, and that the curse was nothing more than a joke.
Yet at 3:15 a.m. on the day of her brother's 25th birthday, Lin Yu-ching's old phone suddenly vibrated once.
It was the last message her brother ever sent.
【Yu-ching, see? I'm totally fine! The Taipei skyline is beautiful. I'm going to the beach tomorrow…】
From that moment on, no one could ever get through to her brother again. No matter how many times the family called, they were met with the same cold message: “The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable.” The police later reported that her brother had disappeared after leaving his rented apartment late on the night of his birthday.
The village elders announced coldly, “It was punishment from the gods. Once he left the boundary, once he failed to kneel before the ancestral tablets on his twenty-fifth birthday, the mountain god who claims lives would find him.”
Her parents believed without question that her brother had died because of the curse.
But Lin Yu-ching refused to believe it. On countless nights, she had forced herself to believe that perhaps her brother had simply grown sick of the suffocating atmosphere at home, perhaps something had happened to him in Taipei, or perhaps… he had deliberately gone into hiding, wanting to sever all ties with this suffocating family and this godforsaken place.
Clinging to that faint, almost self-deceiving hope, she had disguised herself as a normal college student and struggled to survive beneath Taipei's sunlight.
But now, standing inside the mold-scented old house and staring at the mountains outside as they were swallowed by dense fog, the self-deceiving barricade in her heart was crumbling inch by inch.