I’m personally a huge fan of horror-mystery stuff. Honestly, it’s exactly this kind of work that got me into reading in the first place. Why? Because horror-mystery always dangles a hook in front of you, pulling you along, making you curious enough to keep going. Compared to other works where you have no idea where the plot or story is headed, this is way better — it completely saved middle-school me, who’d just read a few modern novels and gotten his face caved in by those fantasy-ass books with no discernible main storyline.

There’s a fairly unique phenomenon in East Asian cultures: the concept of reincarnation. Of course, it’s not culture that decides this—it’s religion. Reincarnation is preached heavily in Buddhism, and a lot of Eastern countries are big on Buddhism, so naturally the concept gets accepted by more people. What is “reincarnation”? Pretty much what it sounds like: after a person dies, their soul is reborn in another person’s body, sometimes with memories of the previous life, sometimes without. It’s got a bit of a “conservation of souls” vibe. In most literature, reincarnation tends to get tied to romance. Lovers from a past life fall in love again in the next cycle. Over thousands of years of轮回, they meet hundreds of times—sometimes they end up together, sometimes they never truly do. Watching them flail around in an endless loop of rebirth makes us, the audience, sigh with melancholy. Why the sighing? Because it’s just fate screwing with people, and you can’t help but think: this is destiny.