Shen Yuan’s grandfather spent his whole life restoring ancient books, then vanished without a trace eight years ago. All that remained on the table were several rolls of silk so brittle they were impossible to touch. Eight years later, Shen Yuan set to work restoring one of them. The instant his fingers made contact, he found himself inside the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Waist-high red grass spread beneath his feet, pebbles in the mud turned over by themselves, and the sun slid down from a tree that pierced the sky. This world was splitting apart. Wherever the cracks spread, talking birds fell silent, and walking mountains died.
Shen Yuan was a cultural relic restorer. Whenever he saw something broken, his hands itched to fix it. He had no sword. He had a brush that formed out of thin air in his palm. Wherever it passed, cracks closed, and faded colors seeped back, inch by inch. Once he restored the Classic of Mountains and Seas, a second volume appeared from between its pages: Investiture of the Gods. Investiture of the Gods, Journey to the West, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Dream of the Red Chamber, and the myths of the pre-Qin era: seven worlds on the brink of death, all waiting their turn for him to save them. Other people transmigrated to take things. Shen Yuan went to mend them. Each world he restored etched its laws into his bones, turning them into power. But every time he made a repair, he lost a piece of himself. Ink stains crept from his fingertips to his wrists, his body temperature fell degree by degree, his dreams were no longer his own, and his memories began to disappear. Worse still, every dying world bore traces of his grandfather. The character “Caution” carved into a stone wall, the words “My grandson will come” in a ghost’s memories, an old blade bearing his grandfather’s name in a blacksmith’s shop. The old man was still alive, trapped in the cracks between worlds and leaving his grandson a trail to follow. But the true killer of these worlds was no demon or monster. It was that we had forgotten how to read them.
