A Hundred Houses of Incense

On the night the old local earth god faded away, Qingya Village was hit by the heaviest rain in thirty years. The next day, everyone in the village had forgotten him.

Sixteen-year-old Shen Deng has no spiritual roots, but he does have one talent: he never forgets a single word he's heard. With his dying breath, the old man gives him an ancient bronze lamp, the Lamp of a Hundred Families, which can hear every god and legend in the world on the verge of being forgotten. The old man leaves only three words about the flame inside: Don't count.

The old woman in the well can never finish a nursery rhyme, and people say the stone lord on the mountain is a man-eating bandit chief. When a notice from the Heavenly Court is posted at the village entrance, declaring, "Anything that doesn't conform to the official record must be discarded," Shen Deng finally understands: in this world, gods don't die by the sword. They die by being forgotten.

Carrying the lamp and accompanied by a fox demon with a sharp tongue but a kind heart, who owes three hundred years' worth of lamp oil, he knocks on door after door and asks the same question:

"Do you still remember him?"

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