Chinese characters have come to life, and I’ve become their attending physician.
My name is Gu Changming, an unremarkable restorer of ancient books. That was true until a Republican-era marriage certificate began seeping blood right before my eyes. Then my golden finger awakened: a book called The Illustrated Guide to Civilizational Diagnosis and Treatment, which specializes in all kinds of “culture spirits.” Poems about Yellow Crane Tower are depressed, words about the Yangtze River gather into a waterlogged monster, and the library holds a debate in the middle of the night.
My team is an odd bunch:
A cold, top-ranked student who traps monsters with mathematical equations, and a hammy novelist who writes on the spot to summon Li Bai to fight. They bicker constantly, but in battle their poetry and swords combine in such a spectacular way that it’s downright cool.
But the world is coming apart:
People who “read” only scroll through their phones, while those who “buy books” do it just to take pictures. Concepts have become disconnected from reality, and a century of repressed pain is taking physical form, crawling out through the cracks to seek revenge.
Some want to euthanize civilization. Others want to wipe it clean and reinstall it. And I, holding my family’s heirloom inkstone, face the ultimate question: Should I become a heartless god and take control of everything, or endure all of civilization’s pain in this mortal body, just to give it one chance to keep hurting, and keep living?
I choose a third path.
“Shh, be quiet. I’m listening to civilization cry out in pain, and thinking about how to fix it.”
