On the southern slopes of Cangwu Mountain, beginning in the 308th year of Yongchang, twenty-three people have gone into the mountains and never returned.
The government notice lists only eight names. No one can say who the other fifteen were.
Shen Yan is a 17-year-old odd-job worker at Jiatang Hall in Qingwu Town, below the mountain. He's an ordinary mortal. At his age, other people are judged by their spiritual roots, and he has none. He has only one thing: an excellent memory. He remembers where every medicine in the cabinet came from, ten years of account books, and who said what on which day, without ever needing to look it up.
His father entered that mountain five years ago. His name is one of the eight on the list.
That autumn, a plant arrived at the shop that hadn't wilted even after being cut for thirteen days. He followed its trail with questions: a well, a circle, a blackwood plaque engraved with something that wasn't writing. He spent three years asking, until his questions led him to the hold of a ship.
There is a rule in the mountains: if you see a circle, go around it.
He went in.
This happened before he entered the mountain, and it is the prelude to the whole book.
