[Short-version book introduction for The Wild Goose Bell Debt]
A sprawling Republican-era tale of the strange, set off by a single bronze bell
In the seventeenth year of chaos, on the winter solstice beyond the pass, a fox-bone bell shatters into seven pieces. Each piece is tied to a life and a secret debt.
Bandit Sai Diaochan, Ye Zhiqiu, the last chief of the Demon Suppression Bureau, Lin Yan with her twin pistols, radio prodigy Lu Xingzhou, and a band of martial wanderers speaking in different dialects are all strung together by the bell’s chime.
They fight their way from Yanhui Ridge to an ancient Yellow River crossing, storm the demon market of Jinmen, break into the snowbound prison of Kunlun, and finally reach the Ruins of the East Sea.
Along the way, paper soldiers carry coffins, the Thunder God borrows teeth, merfolk weave debts, and snow-clad lamas seal souls. Every strange affair bears the words, “Repay the debt owed to the land.”
On the night of September 18, in the twentieth year of the Republic, the seven bells become one. A dragon’s roar shakes the heavens, a bridal-room debt is repaid, and the land is at peace.
The bells fall silent, the people scatter, and only a trail of footprints remains. Every winter solstice, three chimes still ring across the snowy plain:
One to repay Old Tartar for the wind he borrowed, one for Yincui’s proxy wedding, and one for Copper Bell Sister to gather the dead.
