Chapter 1: The Stirring in the Ancestral House The December wind was like a serrated bde made of bone, carving its way into the nape of my neck. By the time I reached Old Locust Vilge, the sky was so bruised and heavy it looked ready to bleed ink. Under the charred remains of a locust tree—split in half by lightning years ago—sat a group of elders wrapped in sheepskin coats, their clouded eyes tracking me, a stranger lugging a weathered leather bag. I am Lin Wang. I collect the whispers of the countryside—the anomalies that the modern world tries to forget. Tucked in my pocket was my grandfather’s old notebook, its edges frayed from years of frantic thumbing. The man who summoned me was Wang Dahang, a simple butcher. He said his pregnant sow—the prize of his farm—was "becoming wrong." "Master Lin, you have to save me... that pig... it’s no longer a pig!" Dahang met me at the gate, his face ash-white. I followed him to the pen. The air was thick with the scent of manure and something sickeningly sweet. The sow, a mountain of flesh, y in the straw. Her belly was distended into a grotesque, pulsating orb. Stranger still, her coarse bristles had fallen away, revealing skin that was blindingly pale and sickly smooth. Sensing my presence, the sow slowly turned her head. My heart lunged into my throat. Her eyes held none of the muddy vacantness of an animal; instead, they were filled with a poisonous, mournful humanity. From her throat came a rasping moan: "Nnh... ah..." "Master Lin, look at her legs!" Dahang shrieked. The sow’s hind legs were bent like a woman’s knees while squatting. The hooves were peeling off, revealing raw, red fleshy nubs that looked terrifyingly like human toes. A chill surged from my heels to my skull. In the lore of the old ways, this is called Pi Li Bian Gu—"Changing Bones Beneath the Skin."