Bound by Painted Skin

Painted Skin: Bound

Synopsis

Liu Ruyan is the last painted-skin artist in the world. Half serpent, she weaves skins with demonic power and paints bones with her life essence, able to wear any face flawlessly. Over the past three hundred years, she has changed a thousand faces for demons, humans, and ghosts, yet has never had a face of her own.

Until, in the deserts of the Western Regions, she meets Luo Zhaoyan: the head of the Luo family, who disguises herself as a man, dressed in a black robe with a clear, moonlit look in her eyes. For the first time, Liu Ruyan thinks of painting someone a truly genuine face. Believing Luo Zhaoyan to be a man, she approaches him as a woman. Later, when she discovers that Luo Zhaoyan is also a woman, she hopes to trade her true heart for hers.

But Luo Zhaoyan's eyes are always fixed on someone else. Yue Jinchao, the mysterious young man with an eyepatch over his left eye, whose smile is like a gust of wind no one can catch. Luo Zhaoyan says that Jinchao is the first person in her life around whom she doesn't have to pretend. He doesn't know she's a woman, but treats her like a brother. She knows she is a woman, yet only wants him to remember her as she is.

Liu Ruyan watches Luo Zhaoyan take a blade for Yue Jinchao, shed tears for him, and toss and turn over a careless remark of his. At last, she understands: though she can change her skin a thousand ways, she cannot paint the face Luo Zhaoyan wants.

As for Yue Jinchao, he hides a truth he hardly dares face himself. When the stream of memories in the Dragon Pool sweeps him into the past, and he discovers that the price of his own existence was that every trace of another person was erased, he suddenly understands the reckless devotion in Luo Zhaoyan's eyes. It is the same as his own yearning to be remembered.

Three people, three masks they cannot take off. They all want this love, but none of them can give it.

Main Characters

Liu Ruyan · Painted-Skin Artist · Half-Serpent Demon

Three hundred years old, she is the last of the painted-skin artists in the world. Human from the waist up and serpent from the waist down, covered in scales, she was born without a face. She paints skins for others, each one lifelike, yet never dares to paint her own face. Her true serpent-demon form is so ugly that she fears she wouldn't even recognize herself if she painted it. Lazy and languid in manner, she seems indifferent to everything, but in truth she longs more than anyone to be truly