Illusory Dream Ying begins with a blood moon that reveals sin. It tells the story of Lu Yi, a poor scholar who is drawn into a web of karmic entanglements spanning past and present because of a gong-and-hammer-shaped birthmark on his chest. On the night of the blood moon, the birthmark seeps blood, revealing evidence that in a past life he embezzled one hundred thousand taels of disaster relief funds. His young attendant A Man, actually a ghostly bailiff, pushes a cart of gold foil to collect the debt, while the mysterious Ying Niang plays the wailing of his past-life execution by waist-cutting on a jade flute, her nature both righteous and wicked.
From the Beidou Temple master Po Junzi summoning wronged spirits with the gong and hammer to demand justice, to the path of reincarnation laid with nine hundred and ninety-nine coffins at the Bridge of Rebirth; from a night feast of ten thousand demons exposing the truth of his coercion in a past life, to glimpses of secrets buried in the depths of the River of Forgetfulness, Lu Yi is pursued through the realms of humans, ghosts, and demons. After six brushes with death, he gradually uncovers the truth: in his past life, he pretended to embezzle the relief funds to save the disaster victims, only to be framed by his accomplices.
Ying Niang's true identity conceals a baffling secret. She is both Bai Jiuli, a fox demon from Qingqiu, and Si, a blind Meng Po. In truth, she was formed from the fusion of Lu Yi's past-life grievance and obsession with Pangu's jade flute. When the mastermind, the former master of Beidou Temple, reveals his true form, Ying Niang uses a phoenix gall to ignite karmic fire and sever the chain of cause and effect. A jade flute emerges from Lu Yi's splitting birthmark. As he plays, his merits and misdeeds are revealed together, and Heaven and Earth decree, “The merits and faults cancel each other out. Reincarnation will decide the rest.”
In the end, the blood moon fades, the birthmark disappears, the gold-foil cart turns into a book chest, and the bloodstains on the jade flute become phoenix patterns. The dream may be over, but karma remains. The figures of Lu Yi, Ying Niang, and A Man linger in the mirror, while the seeds of the Shared-Life Garden continue to sprout, telling of the eternal mystery that humans, ghosts, and demons are no different, and good and evil will always be repaid. The obsessions and truths that span life and death will ultimately find their place in the cycle of reincarnation.
Novella
