The Man Who Guards the Classic of Mountains and Seas: Slaying Gods with a Luoyang Shovel from the Start
[Global Mutation + Monsters from the Classic of Mountains and Seas + No Romance, Pure Thrills + Authenticating Cultural Relics]
On Qingming night in 2025, the bronze sacred tree at Sanxingdui suddenly began to bleed. Lu Ming, a second-year archaeology graduate student, watched in horror as his roommate sprouted an owl’s beak on the dorm balcony. Then a joint announcement from thirty countries appeared on his phone: Do not look at rainbows after rain.
A “mirage-virus” swept across the world. Those infected saw the man-eating monsters recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. In New York, swarms of iron-eating rats with human faces poured from subway tunnels. In Tokyo Bay, the corpse of a strange bird with three heads and six tails floated to the surface. Meanwhile, clutching his ancestral Luoyang shovel, Lu Ming uncovered the most terrifying truth beneath the Forbidden City: Fei, an ancient calamity beast with a bull’s body and a single eye, was forcing half its head through a crack in the oracle bones of Yin Ruins.
“Bai Ze bloodline awakening: 10%. Beast-speech comprehension unlocked.”
While everyone else fled the monsters, Lu Ming was the only one chasing after divine beasts:
He used a Warring States crossbow mechanism inlaid with gold and silver to seal Ao Yin, which had caused a devastating flood.
He subdued the omen of drought, the Yong bird, with a Dunhuang star chart.
He stuffed the Huan beast, which had scammed an entire city, into a Western Han bronze hill censer inlaid with gold.
But the mysterious foreign organization Candle Nine Yin intends to resurrect the most vicious monster in the Classic of Mountains and Seas: “When you see the mark of a one-legged owl, remember to smile at the camera. After all, you’re the 108th ‘Fei sacrifice’ we’ve chosen.”
This is my first novel, so please go easy on me. I’d be grateful for any feedback!
