The Strange Flood of Wuyi

"The women in our family have inherited a strange illness for generations.

From birth, a patch of fine feathers grows behind each one's ear, multiplying as the years pass.

My grandmother gave me two instructions on her deathbed.

First, every full moon, I must feed the crows that come begging on the windowsill with blood from my fingertip.

Second, never answer the knocking outside the window in the dead of night.

I obeyed for twenty years, until urban development reached us, the hills behind our home were leveled, and a sprawling wetland park was built in their place.

From the night the bulldozers arrived, not a single bird sang on the hills again. In the ensuing silence, the feathers behind my ear began spreading at an astonishing rate, until they covered half my cheek.

Last night, I dreamed I was back beneath the wetland's colorful lights. Deep under the freshly turned earth...

There were bones everywhere, countless bird skeletons.

Every one of them stretched its neck upward, beak open in a dreadful arc, silently shrieking at the cold, white moon.

When I woke, I heard a soft knocking outside my window.

Knock, knock, knock."

A lamp comes from the west, a single blessing lasting three thousand years.

Wine ripples in the goblet, while life and death stretch on without end.

She is a bird apart from the flock, but has never hoped to return. The scorching sun and clamor recede farther and farther. At the end of the mystery, in the fabled land of bliss, that boundless night will finally open its arms to her.

In ancient legend, Yi the Great drew his bow and shot down the nine suns that plagued the world. With the birds gone and the bow put away, all things flourished.

But where did the fallen dead sun go, in the blank space the story left behind?

Blurb finalized on 2025.10.20

[Reading Guide]

1. Classic Chinese tales of the strange x urban mystery, a light supernatural road-trip story with a touch of horror.

2. Cool, glamorous, and dashing proprietress x restrained, calculating engineer.

Theme: Traditional legends from ancient Chinese culture.