The day I jumped from the building, my father was still cursing me as a “useless girl.”
When I opened my eyes again, I was bound to the Heaven-Connecting Trial Tower. Three worlds, three trials: being born a woman, being born a mother, and being born a father. I reclaimed the right to be treated as a person from the very bones of patriarchy, redefined love between the stove and the birthing bed, and shattered the trauma passed down through generations amid the snow and wind of the borderlands.
The third trial ended, but the door was still opening. I chose to stay.
In the winds of Iron Mountain Fort, someone opened the fourth door.
Her name was A Yu. The only daughter of the Yu family in the cultivation world, with fair skin, striking beauty, and naturally reddened eyes. A male cultivator tricked her and imprisoned her as a cultivation vessel for seven years. She bore seven children, and in the end, her eight-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, died. She blew up her cultivation, killed all her enemies, and thought as she lay dying: “The trial of love is a trial, too.”
The Jade Guanyin guided her into Wangchuan Town. No memories, no name, and not even her hatred was allowed to come along. Starting with a bowl of cold porridge, she learned to brew wine, weave cloth, gather herbs, and catch fish. The wine she brewed held dreams of past and present lives; the cloth she wove formed a web of human hearts. Medicine and poison were one and the same, and her fishing spear was like a lance.
Lin Xiao settled inside the door. A Yu awoke by the river.
The trials of the Heaven-Connecting Tower never stopped. The question of what it means to be human will always need someone to answer it.
Volume One: Born a Woman | Complete
Volume Two: Born a Mother | Complete
Volume Three: Born a Father | Complete
Volume Four: Born a Human | Ongoing
When every identity has been stripped away, what remains?
In Wangchuan Town, A Yu starts growing again from a bowl of porridge.
