The Figure in the Shadow Puppetry

In the final years of the Great Yao dynasty, the sky split open, the Shadow Abyss hung upside down, and ink-dark rain devoured the world. Humanity retreated to the lantern cities, scraping by through the skills of the hundred trades. Shen Wang, the last shadow puppeteer of the Xuansi Pavilion, concealed a miniature theater in his palm. Watched by higher-dimensional "spectators," he had to put on good shows with light and shadow to stay alive, or his body would gradually turn into a thin, brittle shadow puppet. As he investigates the truth behind his master's slaughter, he is drawn into the thousand-year game between the Hundred Trades Alliance and the Shadow Abyss Cult. He discovers that the puppeteers' lifelines fuel the lighthouse, and that the alliance leader has long since become a puppet. From Songyan City to Jinyang, from the Sealed Shadow ruins to the heart of the Shadow Abyss, Shen Wang wields beast hide as a blade and uses the curtain as a boundary, combining the arts of the hundred trades. Between two and three dimensions, he stages a world-shaking performance to fool the heavens and sever the threads of fate. In the end, he turns himself into a shadow puppet and shatters the invisible curtain that shrouds the world, allowing the primordial light to return to humankind.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.