King of the Demon Gu

Cheng Jun is a recent college graduate who has just started his first job when he receives an unexpected WeChat message from Lin Feng, a childhood friend he has not seen in fifteen years. The message instructs him to meet at their old primary school in the remote village of Yidu. Despite the internet being rife with scams, Cheng Jun recognizes Lin Feng through a secret childhood code phrase and immediately takes a week off to return to his hometown. Upon arrival, he finds Yidu to be a desolate, abandoned place with no inhabitants and a profound sense of eerie silence. After waiting in vain, he discovers an old man burning spirit money in a dilapidated noodle shop, who claims to know Lin Feng but insists that Lin Feng died fifteen years ago during a mysterious plague that killed over a thousand people in the village.

Cheng Jun refuses to believe the old man, citing his own survival of the plague and the recent message from Lin Feng. The old man, revealed to be a former mortician named Su Laosan who raised Lin Feng, becomes agitated and strikes Cheng Jun, causing him to lose consciousness. Cheng Jun awakens in Niujiao Village, taken in by a kind farming couple. They warn him that Yidu is a cursed place and that his face looks deathly pale, suggesting he has encountered something unclean. Cheng Jun dreams of Lin Feng, who appears as a cold, black-clad figure and tells him to meet at Yidu that night. The next day, a tragic event occurs when three floating corpses are found in the river, two of whom are Cheng Jun’s classmates, Zhao Yiran and Liu Li, who he had reconnected with online. The third corpse is the son of the farming couple who took him in.

The corpses exhibit strange symptoms, including white eyebrows and hair, and suddenly burst open to release swarms of white flying lice that transform into deadly moths. A local witch doctor named Huang Si Po attempts to fight the creatures using mystical arts, but she is overpowered. The villagers, led by an elderly patriarch, decide to burn the bodies to prevent the spread of the curse, referring to the phenomenon as the "White Moth Phenomenon" that occurred fifteen years prior. As the corpses burn, more moths emerge, killing several villagers instantly. Huang Si Po manages to seal most of the moths in a black hemp garment but is injured in the process. A mysterious voice from the Savage Mountain announces the arrival of a powerful Gu sorceress seeking someone called "Black Robe."

Cheng Jun receives another message from Lin Feng, who warns him that Niujiao Village is actually a mass grave and has been uninhabited for years, implying the people he met were not human. Cheng Jun realizes he is in grave danger and rushes toward Yidu to meet Lin Feng, accompanied by two other classmates, Gu Man and Wu Xiaotian, who also received messages from Lin Feng. As they approach Yidu, they encounter a ghost wall and fall into a hollow filled with yin energy. There, they meet a beautiful woman with long white hair floating above a cold pool, who sings a sorrowful song. She reveals herself to be connected to the Savage Mountain and attacks them, forcing Cheng Jun and his friends to flee with the help of the black-clad figure, who Cheng Jun suspects is Lin Feng.

The story unfolds as a supernatural thriller where Cheng Jun must navigate a world where the dead do not stay dead and ancient curses are resurfacing. The core conflict revolves around the mystery of the plague from fifteen years ago, the true nature of Lin Feng, and the threat posed by the Gu sorceress from the Savage Mountain. Cheng Jun’s journey takes him from a mundane modern life into a realm of mysticism, where he must uncover the truth about his past and the fate of his friends while surviving encounters with living dead and powerful magical entities.