The Mountain God Shrine Was Smashed

[Blurb]

Dantian, the river god, woke up at the bottom of the river and found himself standing in front of a convenience store freezer, choosing an ice cream bar.

The river god, three thousand years old, looked down at himself: a white T-shirt, jeans, and plastic slippers. The cashier said it came to 19.6 yuan. He searched his pockets and found only a shell flecked with sand from the pre-Qin era.

Later, he found his Daoist partner. She was hiding in a corner of a hot pot restaurant, staring blankly at the bubbling, scorching pot.

“Fewer believers, no temples left.” His partner turned her phone screen toward him. The trending topic read #Qing-Dynasty Murals Found in Abandoned Mountain God Temple#. It had 23,000 likes, and the comments were full of people praying for success in their exams and job searches.

And so, two strange neighbors appeared in the city.

Dantian helped the auntie downstairs find her missing cat. The cat was perched on a fire hydrant and said, “When you flooded the place all those years ago, my ancestors survived by hiding in the reeds.”

Chixin fixed the air conditioning for an insomniac programmer. The crooked tree outside the window was a mountain spirit she'd once enlightened, and every night it sang ancient lullabies to humans.

One late night, the office building lost power. Dantian found Chixin on the 48th floor. The mountain god was telling stories to a group of frightened interns:

“Long ago, there was a mountain, and in that mountain ran a river...”

Moonlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the river god suddenly understood.

Faith was not incense. It was the bright, shining eyes of the people looking at them in that very moment.

Their romance unfolded slowly, like a river flowing around the foot of a mountain.

Until one day, Chixin pointed out the window. Stones and bowls of clear water sat on every balcony, and a child was loudly reciting a song that had been passed down for a thousand years.

“Dantian, Chixin, may you always stay by each other's side. Only then will peace reign beneath heaven.”

Wherever there is a river, there is a mountain. Here among humanity, their happy ending is their way home.

//

A reclusive mountain god × a river god on the verge of turning dark

Theme: Only by making fair and impartial decisions can one attain the right path.