I Attain the Sacred Way in a Demon’s Body

At its heart, this book explores the idea that understanding comes before action, that emotion carries the Way, and that controlling the waters means mastering the heart. It reconstructs the deeper spiritual vision behind Yu the Great's flood control: not merely the conquest of nature, but the easing of human obsession, the cleansing of historical memory, and the laying of foundations for civilized order.

The first volume, The Primordial World Split Asunder, focuses on Yu the Great as he takes up his father's mission, leaves his wife and children, and traverses the Nine Provinces, achieving a revolution in understanding, from blocking the waters to channeling them, through blood, tears, and wisdom. The jade awl, the straw rain cape, the red leaves, the scarlet ferns: each token gives form to emotion, and every inch of riverbed is etched with the footsteps of learning through action. When Lady Tushan transforms into a stone that gazes toward her absent husband, and Yu the Great falls into a deep sleep on Mount Kuaiji, their sacrifices do not end. They become a form of waiting, waiting for a worthy person in a later age to recover the fragments of the Water-Taming Stone and carry on the unfinished Way.

The second volume, When the Stone Shatters, Life Is Born, spans two thousand years. The stone that gazes toward its absent husband gives birth to a stone monkey, while the Water-Taming Stone sets cause and effect in motion. Sun Wukong is no longer simply the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, but a spiritual heir to Yu the Great, born generations later. Beneath the Bodhi Patriarch's seat, he comprehends the Way of Flowing Water; beneath the Five Elements Mountain, he recognizes the suffering of all living beings. On his journey west, he no longer travels only to obtain the scriptures. He redraws the Yu Gong, channels the human heart, and purifies historical memories that have been twisted out of shape. When he senses the stirrings of Bai Suzhen's feelings deep beneath West Lake, a new tale of waiting, sacrifice, and redemption quietly begins...

With water as its lifeblood, stone as its proof, and gates as its boundaries, this book bridges myth and reality, the individual and all under heaven, emotion and the Great Way. It is both a literary interpretation of the Chinese civilization's view of knowledge and action, and a stirring, tragic hymn to all who struggle between duty and personal feeling, and toil between ideals and reality.