The Wandering Record of Maoshan

The Maoshan Wanderer's Record

A boy takes up the Dao in a war-torn age.

In the early years of the Republic of China, warlords carve up the country, and monsters begin to stir. Fifteen-year-old Chen Shi becomes the last disciple of the Maoshan Sect. Alongside his master, a hard-drinking, outrageous man who somehow always turns things around at the critical moment, he sets off on a rootless wandering journey.

They travel across a broken land: the haunted corpse-driving trails of western Hunan, the bustling docks of Tianjin, the decadent sounds of Shanghai's foreign concessions, and the vast snowy forests beyond the passes. What they encounter is not only ghosts and monsters, but also the treachery of human hearts and the joys and sorrows of people living through the end of an age.

In a deserted village's charity funeral home, dozens of corpses stand upright at night, yearning for home. The boy makes his first attempt at helping the dead find peace, and discovers that guiding ghosts is harder than catching them. In a Jiangnan theater, a rouge-stained mirror traps the lingering soul of a famous actress from a century ago. A duet between the living and the dead, The Peony Pavilion, cannot sing away the attachments of the mortal world. At a Yangtze ferry crossing, accumulated yin energy sinks into an abyss. A Daoist is powerless to turn the tide and can only make a sorrowful pact for survival with a hundred ghosts...

This is no power fantasy about slaying demons. It is a collection of strange tales from a turbulent age.

They resolve one eerie mystery after another, but can't unravel a world growing more chaotic by the day. Evil spirits are easy to subdue, but human hearts are hard to pacify. Magic can guide the souls of the dead, but who will guide this troubled age?

They walk, they watch, they make their choices. In a world where humans and ghosts are hard to tell apart, and good and evil intertwine, the last master and disciple of Maoshan have only one question:

Can they banish every evil spirit and still save this troubled age? Can they hold on to their principles and still protect the world of the living?

The Maoshan Wanderer's Record: a warm, eerie, and deeply rueful monster-hunting journey from the Republic of China era begins here.