Death Invitation

Author: Qi Gen Hu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: "It rained, with sparse raindrops falling. A dark cloud covered the sky, appearing and disappearing, drifting unpredictably. When the wind came, it brought a chill, and the bone-chilling feeling emerged at that moment." These are the opening lines of Death Invitation, faint yet like a landscape painting with heavy ink, tinged with melancholy. If it ended there, this story wouldn’t affect your mood. But if you chose to read on, you’d find you couldn’t control your emotions.
Attention: You couldn’t afford to lose focus for even a moment, not daring to miss a single paragraph, because missing one—even a single sentence—would leave you unable to continue. You wouldn’t understand why such things were happening, and you’d have to go back and reread.
Anxiety: At this point, reading had become a torment. You’d entered a vast maze, wishing you could see the ending directly, but you couldn’t. Instead, the deeper you got into the labyrinth, the more desperate the plot became, pressing down on you until you couldn’t breathe.
Intelligence: Unconsciously, you had to mobilize all your wit to think about how to escape this desperate situation. Reading had turned into an intellectual game, and the anxiety of wanting to be free almost drove you to the brink of collapse—until the climax, until the light at the end of the tunnel. You saw yourself. What was that feeling like? You didn’t have a twin, you hadn’t faced a mirror, yet you saw yourself. A you with every detail identical to yours. You didn’t believe it. You were anxious, even possibly on the verge of breaking down. The protagonist in the story saw themselves. And along with them, you saw yourself.
Alfred Hitchcock once said: If a group of people are dining together and suddenly a bomb explodes, that’s shock. But if you know there’s a bomb under the table, that’s suspense. Knowing there’s a bomb under the table makes your heart hang in the air, but it doesn’t make you anxious. Death Invitation, however, made you anxious and bewildered. You felt as though all your intelligence couldn’t keep up with the plot’s progression: Why is this happening? Why is this happening?! You saw yourself—a dead person coming back to life. Were you him? Was he you? Zhuangzi’s dream of the butterfly, who was who? This anxiety would drag you relentlessly toward the ending. To make anxiety a form of reading pleasure—absurd, but it truly is.
According to the author, she didn’t know where the ending was when she was writing, not even how the plot would resolve itself. She, too, felt anxious and lost. In a way, Death Invitation—it’s just Qi Gen Hu playing an intellectual game with you. Don’t think that the you in the reading is just an outsider; you’re not the protagonist of the story. Many people say Qi Gen Hu’s suspense imitates Gu Long. But there are also too many differences. Qi Gen Hu’s plot is suffocating, icy, and relentless. You can’t see the ending all at once—you can only break down. But Gu Long’s surprise, that twist in the plot, those turns and turns again, can let you take a breath midway. Similar to Dan Brown. Qi Gen Hu’s surprise has only one—following you to the very end. Only after finishing Death Invitation will you realize how different they are.
As far as I know, Qi Gen Hu is a smart, talented, outwardly cold but inwardly warm, and calm woman. Her profession is graphic design. Actually, Death Invitation had another cover designed by her herself. But finally because of a change in the format, it wasn’t adopted. Personally, I feel her cover was far more beautiful than this final version. Or, Death Invitation was just her playing an intellectual game with you. But this game nearly drove you to the brink of collapse.
A black letter appeared. A century-old sealed shop reopened. A ship carrying six people arrived at its destination—a desolate island that gathered everyone. A madwoman said: You should have come. But they all came, so now people are starting to die! A black-clad woman brought astonishing news. An old lady brought a strange token. A key opened a century-old shop buried deep underground. Dried corpses were finally revealed. Photos quietly appeared. Now it’s time to flee!
He was trapped in a century-old shop on the island, yet discovered he was already dead. He began to investigate, only to find that the living were dying, and the dead were alive. Who could be trusted? She was trapped in a shop buried deep underground, yet learned that the dead were still alive. She began to search, only to discover a century-old injustice and her true identity. Who was she? The eerie plot needs you to experience it slowly!