The story opens in a funeral parlor in a small town in the province of Jishui. The narrator tells us that the town is so small that there are only a few funeral parlors. One day, a man named "chang" is called to deal with the body of a man who has died in an automobile accident. He sends his colleague away to do the work himself, but he gets an ulterior motive: he has a gambling problem, and he knows that the family of the deceased will not want to take the body's belongings. So he takes the necklace off the dead man's body and gambles with the rest of the money. He's thrilled that he can pay off his gambling debt and gamble again. The next day, another body arrives at the funeral parlor. It's a man with a small buddha on his body. The necklace is a gift from the deceased's family, but chang doesn't know that. He thinks that the man might be a man. He chases after the shadow of the man. The shadow disappears, and chang is terrified. He searches for the figure in the room by room, but no one can find him.