Zhen Shiyin

The Zhen family estate, home to one of Gusu’s great clans, was once the most gentle corner of misty, rain-soaked Jiangnan. Zhen Shiyin owned a collection of paintings, calligraphy, and ancient books, while his virtuous wife was expecting a child. Their days stretched on in tranquil ease, like willow branches swaying beside the city moat.

Then, outside the Mysterious Temple, a lame Daoist pressed a fragment of jade engraved with “Illusory Realm of Great Emptiness” into his hands. The ballad “All the world knows immortals are good” became an ominous prophecy that would haunt him for half his life. At his beloved daughter Yinglian’s first-birthday ceremony, she grasped a writing brush in one hand and a powder box in the other, prompting an old monk to sigh, “A beautiful woman is fated for sorrow.” When he helped the impoverished scholar Jia Yucun travel to the capital for the imperial examinations, was he offering help in a time of need, or letting a wolf through the door? A keepsake from his mother, hidden in an old book trunk, turned out to fit the jade fragment, forming a complete illustrated chart. Its twelve sorrowful scenes pointed straight to the calamity of “separation from one’s own flesh and blood.”

As Hu San’s son’s provocations and the disputes at the Gourd Temple came one after another, and the Daoist’s song rang out again beyond the wall on Mid-Autumn Night, Zhen Shiyin finally realized that the peaceful life he had guarded was only an illusion on fate’s chessboard. The jade fragment, the illustrated chart, and the prophecy would ultimately push him into an inescapable catastrophe in the mortal world. He could protect the treasured original works of Wen Zhengming, but could he protect the people dearest to him?