On the Path to the Great Dao Novel

My name is Chen Shi—Chen meaning honest, Shi meaning sincere. My grandfather is an extraordinarily peculiar man who performs daily rituals before his own ancestral tablet, lighting incense and consuming candles as offerings to himself. The villagers of our community harbor deep fear toward him, a fear so profound that it has shaped their perception of our entire family. I too grew up terrified in his presence. However, as time passed, a troubling realization dawned on me: the villagers' fear was never truly directed at my grandfather. Instead, their terror was centered entirely on me. Most disturbing of all, my grandfather himself has become afraid of me. This strange reversal of fear—from elder to youth, from ancestor to descendant—lies at the heart of this tale, as I navigate the mysterious circumstances that have transformed me into the object of everyone's dread, including my own grandfather's.