Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts

Chen Hui is an eighteen-year-old high school graduate who rents a cheap three-bedroom apartment near his university with his friend Tai Long. The apartment, located in Building Four, Room 404, is haunted by the ghost of a twelve-year-old girl who died by suicide in the home. Despite the landlord Miss Li warning him of the supernatural occurrences, Chen Hui accepts the low rent. Upon moving in, he encounters the purple-faced ghost girl, who enters his body and demands his help to get revenge. Simultaneously, Chen Hui returns to his hometown in Du Zhou, Changshou District, where his mother worships a strange stone statue with demonic features. The statue, which Chen Hui had eaten offerings from as a child, becomes active and attacks him, nearly strangling him until the local fortune-teller, Li Shigao, intervenes. Li Shigao reveals that Chen Hui’s father, a Yinyang Master named Chen, sealed a vengeful Shanghun ghost within the statue twenty years ago after a woman died under mysterious circumstances involving Chen’s feng shui work. Li Shigao gives Chen Hui a talisman to suppress the statue and a book of spells, instructing him to learn Daoist arts to eventually help the ghost pass on.

Chen Hui is identified as a Si Chen person, born in the year, day, month, and hour of the Dragon, making him susceptible to spirit attachment. The ghost girl clinging to him is revealed to be a Shuimang ghost, a vengeful spirit caused by poisoning, which seeks a replacement for reincarnation. Chen Hui is possessed by this ghost in an alley but is rescued by his childhood friend Li Xuxiang, a feng shui master, and Han Si Fan, a skilled ghost hunter. Han Si Fan temporarily seals the Shuimang ghost using silver nails, and Chen Hui is hospitalized. After recovering, Chen Hui formally becomes a disciple of Wu Jiu, a powerful Yinyang Master, receiving the Daoist title Batman. He begins training in talisman drawing, successfully creating an Inferno Talisman on his first attempt. However, the talisman only mildly affects the stone statue in his home, which then possesses Li Xuxiang. Chen Hui and Han Si Fan subdue the possessed Li Xuxiang, and the Shuimang ghost flees.

The narrative shifts to Tao Village, where an elderly man named Wang Yongquan has been killed by a hopping corpse. The corpse was attracted to the house due to a malicious feng shui formation designed by Zhao Chen Yang, a carpenter with a generational feud against the Wang family. The formation, known as the Banner Summoning Ghosts layout, combined with other curses, was intended to bring ruin to the Wang lineage. Chen Hui, Li Xuxiang, Han Si Fan, and Li Shigao arrive to investigate. Li Shigao identifies the three interlocking feng shui curses: the Cuckoo Killing the Sparrow’s Nest layout, the Pitchfork Facing the Door layout, and the Banner Summoning Ghosts layout. He destroys the main doors to break two of the formations and prepares an altar to dismantle the remaining curse. Zhao Chen Yang emerges from hiding, admitting to constructing the house with the intent to kill Wang Yongquan due to a past romantic rivalry involving a woman named Song Si Ao. The story establishes Chen Hui’s entry into the world of Daoist exorcism, his connection to his absent father’s legacy, and the escalating supernatural threats he must confront while learning to master his new abilities.