Strange Stories from the Mountains and Seas of the Tang Dynasty

On a full-moon night in Qingzhou, pearls are accompanied by weeping on the seaside, and those who pick up pearls die from fester in three days; deep in the mountains of Wuzhou, things with human faces and animal bodies abduct children, leaving only fishy green hair. Frequent reports of strange things made the people panic. Emperor Taizong Li Shimin decided to rewrite the Classic of Mountains and Seas, not for curiosity, but to distinguish the authenticity and bring order to the world. Zhang Yunzhou, a Taoist priest from Zhongnan Mountain, was famous for his vivid sketches and his ability to identify falsehoods through empirical evidence. He once solved the snake miasma in Hengshan Mountain and investigated the rumors of sharks. Emperor Taizong summoned him to the palace, gave him the surname Li, and gave him the "Sacred Scroll". This scroll was made of Kunlun ice silk mixed with gold foil. It could draw pictures of mountains and rivers and strange animals, record and verify details, and even summon the objects in the painting to protect yourself in times of crisis. Since then, Li Yunzhou has traveled all over the Tang Dynasty with a painting bag on his back and a sacred book in his hand. He not only wants to find out whether the "Pearl Disaster" is a punishment from the sea god or a strange beast, but he also wants to uncover whether the mysterious shadow in the mountains is the manifestation of spirits or a human heart. Using the brush as an eye and empirical evidence as a ruler, he will finally clear away the fog among the anecdotes about the mountains and seas and the splendor of the Tang Dynasty, and write a "verifiable and usable" authentic version of the Classic of Mountains and Seas for the world. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.