The Jade Carver of Qiyuan

This is an artisan epic spanning 240 years of the Western Zhou dynasty. Yu Chun, a master craftsman from the fallen Yin-Shang dynasty, enters Qiyuan bearing his ancestral jade knife. With a plain jade disc, he knocks on the doors of the ancestral temple and establishes the Zhou dynasty's ritual-jade tradition: plainness is revered, and perfection is paramount. Ten generations of jade carvers take turns guarding this legacy. In the fourth generation, Yu Huai uses his heaven-gifted skill to bring fine incised lines to their peak. In the seventh, Yu Shen holds fast to the humble life of a plain-jade craftsman amid an extravagant age of chaos. In the final generation, Yu Gui carries on the craft with a broken body, burying more than 300 pieces of ritual jade deep underground as the flames of war draw near. Three thousand years later, the yellow earth is brushed away, revealing a plain jade disc, still warm and lustrous as ever, with the words "Guard Virtue" carved into it. It holds the final, and most enduring, warmth of civilization.

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