Modern Bestiary of Demons: The Immortal Fox Plays the Zither for a Thousand Years

Mystery-solving ensemble + fantasy and the supernatural + heartwarming stories. Su Jiujing, a nine-tailed fox, has followed her master, Gong Yuhui, the spirit of a nine-string zither, into the Demon-Suppression Bureau to hunt demons for over a thousand years. She has met emperors lamenting, “In the moonlight, it pains me to look back on my lost homeland”; scholars sighing, “The tears of the survivors are spent amid the dust of the northern invaders”; and Taoist priests furious that “the gods treat people like ants, and people treat demons and beasts like livestock. They claim all living things are equal, but rank them deep in their bones. Hypocrisy at its worst.” She has encountered family members remembering a beloved with the words, “The loyal dead lie beneath green hills everywhere; why wrap their bodies in horse hides and carry them home?”; a close friend mourning how “we met as children, but in the end we could never share the same path”; and colleagues lamenting that “though I once wrote poems and sold them to get by, in the end a natural disaster buried everything”...

While solving cases, Su Jiujing has met far too many people and witnessed far too much. Their demon-hunting is efficient, but the collateral damage is immense. Su Jiujing and Gong Yuhui played music for Emperor Huizong of the Song when they learned he enjoyed it, and the Song fell. They hunted demons in the Ming and played a tune, and the Ming fell. In the Jiawu Year, they saw how weak the Qing dynasty was and, furious, played another tune. The Qing fell, and the whole world was turned upside down.

The Celestial Court: Stop playing! If humanity evolves and gets rid of the Four Olds, they’ll stop offering us incense!

In the Age of the End of the Dharma, humanity no longer believes in ghosts or gods. Without human faith, the ancient gods lost their source of power and were gradually replaced by the newly formed Celestial Court. Everything changed. Su Jiujing decided to lie flat with Gong Yuhui, stepping back from the front lines and living a carefree, lazy life. But the world doesn’t always go as the beasts wish. A fox-and-ghost case tore away the veil hiding the conflict between the Celestial Court and the mortal world, drawing her family, master, and friends into the fray. Where will they go from here?

The funny, everyday adventures of divine beasts who have lived in modern cities for ten thousand years.