Ink Traces Across Three Lifetimes

Synopsis of the script Three Lives, Ink Traces

Lin Mobai, a frustrated contemporary calligrapher, triggers a rift in time and space while viewing an authentic work by Mi Fu, and his soul transmigrates to Huangzhou in the Northern Song Dynasty.

The disgraced official Su Shi rescues him from the riverbank. Amid the sound of rain leaking through Snow Hall, he becomes Su Shi's disciple, learns the finest brushwork secrets firsthand from the Four Great Masters Su, Huang, Mi, and Cai, and forms a bond through calligraphy with Su Xiaochan, Su Shi's niece. But the power that brought him across time cannot be controlled: on the eve of his wedding, he is forcibly pulled back to the modern era. Su Xiaochan waits for him by the river for more than two years, copying the Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River 365 times. At the end of every copy, she hides the two characters “Mobai.” She dies in sorrow.

Seeking the true meaning of calligraphy, Lin Mobai's soul transmigrates to the Tang Dynasty and studies under Yan Zhenqing. Amid the ruins of the An Lushan Rebellion, he witnesses firsthand how the Draft of a Requiem for My Nephew was written in blood and tears, and grasps the integrity behind the idea that “a person's character is reflected in their writing.” Combining the Song people's “spirit” with the Tang people's “method,” he returns to the modern era. Before the ruins of the Orchid Pavilion, he ascends to heaven in broad daylight and enters the realm of calligraphy to meet Wang Xizhi.

In three contests, he pours a thousand years of love and debt into ink and brush, creating the Three Lives Ink Manuscript. The Sage of Calligraphy sighs, “The Sage of Calligraphy established the art; the Immortal of Calligraphy carries its feelings.” He is named the “Immortal of Calligraphy,” but does not join the ranks of the immortals. Every year on the third day of the third lunar month, he sits alone by the water at the Orchid Pavilion and writes a volume of the Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River, sending it toward a star in the southeast.

The series has six seasons and ninety episodes in total. This is an epic about seeking the Dao through calligraphy: a thousand years of calligraphy, distilled into a single word, “love.”