My name is Lu Shi. I used to be a fortune-teller beneath an overpass, and a fraud before the apocalypse. Even now, I'm still stubbornly running my stall: ten yuan per reading, fair for young and old alike.
Then one day, I saw the truth behind the rift in the sky in someone's threads of karma. The sky hadn't split on its own. Someone had torn it open. And that person had the same surname as me.
His name was Lu Yuan. Three hundred years ago, he tore open that rift in the sky to save someone, unleashing every monster from the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Then he sealed the gate with his own body.
Three hundred years have passed, and the gate is rusting.
The dragon bones in the abyss are beginning to stir. The Faceless One on the other side of the mirror is waiting for me. An ancient ferocious beast sealed underground for thirty thousand years is counting: one, two, three.
Lu Yuan left me a message: “Pass the torch. You're the third generation. It's your turn.”
I'm just a street-stall fortune-teller. You expect me to seal the rift in the sky?
Su Jiuli calls me a fraud, but always slips an extra poached egg into my bowl.
The little zongzi says, “The dragon doesn't hurt,” even though it's clearly in agony.
The old chain-smoker is three hundred years old, and when he spins his pipe three times, it means he's nervous.
Every time Lord White Bone drops by, he brings two baskets of eggs, with life-saving lingzhi mushrooms hidden beneath them.
This is a losing business. But since we're already losing, we might as well lose all the way.
Later, the candy sprouted. Green leaves, orange stems. Turn it upside down, and it looks like a piece of candy pushing a tree up through the ground.
Apocalypse of the Classic of Mountains and Seas | Fortune-telling under an overpass | Sealing the sky with one's life | Dark humor
