The world has been dark for far too long.
So dark that the Embroidered Uniform Guard can cut people down at will, that a prince of the realm sacrifices living people to an iron cannon in his cellar, that an embroiderer can be skinned alive and still sew twenty-seven human skins into a garment to wear. So dark that the osmanthus spirit waited three years for her lover, only to get a single reply: “Got it.” So dark that a mute old woman has sent letters from a bridge for twenty years, every one saying “Come back.” So dark that someone has kept watch over an empty grave for three hundred years, until even they have forgotten whom they are waiting for.
But even in the darkest night, there is always a moon.
In a wild bamboo grove outside Yongzhou City, the moon is blue. Beneath its light stands a barefoot woman, two silver bells tied around her ankles. She is a bamboo spirit named A Qing. She guarded the grave of a dead scholar for three hundred years, until at last she could no longer tell whether she was a demon or a gravestone. Then a constable came along, a man surnamed Xu, with a dragon-slaying blade at his waist. He said no pretty words. He simply swung his sword and split the grave open, freeing her from her obsession and turning her into a bamboo immortal who could walk and laugh, shield him from blades, and warm his bed.
From then on, she went wherever he went. He investigated cases; she subdued demons. When he drew his sword against this rotten world, she stood behind him. Bamboo shoots burst through the earth to clear his way, and silver bells rang in the night wind to guide him. When he lay awake at night, she would untie the bells from her ankles and set them beside his pillow. “Listen to their chime, and you'll know I'm still here.”
