The video was grainy, shot on what looked like a 2010s camcorder. A child’s bedroom. Posters of Naruto and Sailor Moon peeled at the edges. In the center, a boy sat cross-legged, maybe ten years old, staring into the lens. Then he spoke:
“Deliver us from evil, Grandpa said. But what if the evil is inside the house?”
Lin Wei spent the next week building a simple Bilibili collective—no algorithms, no ads. A channel called (灯笼). It hosted anonymous audio submissions: kids reading poetry, playing piano, or just breathing into a mic to prove they still existed. He added hotline numbers in the description. Crisis resources. A comment section moderated by volunteer psychology students.
The reply came as a single danmaku, green text against black: “To be seen. To be heard. To be delivered.”
Lin Wei froze. The boy wasn’t acting. His voice cracked like he hadn’t spoken in days. Behind him, a door creaked open. A shadow—too tall, too still—filled the frame. The video cut to static.
Lin Wei never learned his real name. But he’d learned something else: that evil doesn’t always wear horns. Sometimes it wears a family photo. And sometimes, deliverance begins with a single person choosing to see .
“They told us to stay home to stay safe. But some of us were already trapped. Deliver us from the fathers who shout. From the mothers who drink. From the silence after the slam.”
He traced the usernames. Most were new accounts, created April 2020. But one stood out: , whose upload history was a single, private playlist titled The Quarantine Tapes .
