In the mist-shrouded alleys of old Yueyang, there stood a teahouse that locals called "The Whispering Pavilion." Its owner, Chen Wei, had inherited the establishment from his grandmother, who warned him never to enter the storage room after midnight.
Chen Wei, a practical man who studied business administration in Wuhan, dismissed these warnings as superstitious nonsense. But on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, when the gates of the underworld supposedly opened, he discovered why his grandmother had been so insistent.
It began with the dreams—vivid visions of a woman in a red qipao standing at the edge of Dongting Lake, her feet never quite touching the ground. She would beckon to him with one pale hand, while the other clutched a length of red thread, the kind used in Chinese weddings to bind lovers together.
One night, unable to sleep, Chen Wei decided to organize the storage room. As he opened the door, he found it inexplicably cold despite the summer heat. The room smelled of incense and something else—something like lotus flowers left too long in stagnant water.
There, beneath dusty boxes of tea leaves, he discovered an old photograph. A woman in red, identical to his dream visitor, stared back at him. Written on the back in faded characters: "Li Meilin, 1923 - Gone to the lake, never returned."
The next evening, Chen Wei found himself walking toward Dongting Lake, his feet moving as if guided by invisible hands. The red thread from his dreams now stretched before him, disappearing into the mist. He followed it to an abandoned pier where an old woman sold paper offerings for the dead.
"You see the thread," she whispered, her eyes milky with cataracts. "Your grandmother never told you about your great-aunt Meilin, did she? She was betrothed to a merchant who betrayed her. On her wedding day, she walked into the lake with her red wedding dress still on. Now she seeks a replacement each generation."
Chen Wei tried to run, but his legs felt heavy as stone. The red thread wrapped around his ankles, pulling him toward the dark water. In the reflection of the moon on the lake's surface, he saw not his own face, but Li Meilin's—pale, beautiful, and utterly cold.
They found him the next morning, sitting at his teahouse counter, staring at nothing. His hair had turned white overnight, and his eyes held the depth of still water. Sometimes, customers say, they see him speaking to someone who isn't there, his lips forming a name: "Meilin."
The teahouse still operates, though Chen Wei never speaks of what happened. But on foggy nights, when the moon is full and the seventh month approaches, a red thread sometimes appears on the teahouse floor, leading toward the storage room that remains forever locked.