Mr. Earth

Mr. Earth is a long supernatural suspense novel by the Northeast Chinese horror writer Miao Qimiao (pen name "Miao Qimiao Dian," nicknamed "Uncle Miao" by readers), serialized exclusively on Heiyan Reading from October 2015 and completed in February 2016, about 650,000 characters in total. The novel opens by establishing a system of occult titles: tomb robbers are called earth masters, those without a sect are called Mr. White, those who sew heads back onto corpses are called Granny Mending Heaven; and the branch that handles feng shui, earth veins, and yin-yang matters is called "Mr. Earth." The protagonist, Xiang Kai (the story is told in first person), is a practitioner of this trade—every job he takes sounds like an ordinary house, mountain villa, or old object, but actually involves perilous and bizarre traps such as ghost-offered incense, skinning demons, eye-pecking gu, and the Nine-Person Cave. Succeed, and you can make gods and ghosts tremble and laugh at the occult world; fail, and no bone of you will remain. The story begins with a "test sleeper" job: strange things keep happening in the house he is paid to stay in, an uninvited guest appears on the bed, people disappear one after another, and the police find nothing. As the investigation proceeds, clues lead to strangely numbered train tickets, old diaries and stage scripts, a snake-coiled jar and "possession by the Snake Immortal," ghost doubles, dangerous old mansions, and a series of events, as well as grudges among occult practitioners who undercut and stab each other in the back. Employers and practitioners must "test the skill before discussing the price," and cooperation and wariness always coexist. Like Miao Qimiao's other works, the book's focus is not gore and sensationalism but "the occult world is a jianghu": rules, human ties, loyalty, old debts. As the protagonist slays demons and ghosts along the way, the farther he goes the more he understands that what he really wants is simply someone who will one day collect his corpse, bury him, and burn paper offerings for him. The book closes with Chapter 245, "Your Own Story, Only You Know It," with a cold, bleak desolation between the lines.