Record of Sparse Lamps on a Rainy Night

The main story in the Jianghu Night Rain, Ten Years of Lamps series, hence it is also titled Jianghu Night Rain, Ten Years of Lamps.

[Brief Introduction]

In the summer of the second year of Guangde, a letter of unknown origin arrived in Chang'an for He Zigui.

It contained barely twenty characters, yet swept the dust from the memories of a war-torn past. It spoke of a comrade whose fate was unknown, and urged her to travel to Jiangnan and investigate.

At that very moment, an imperial secret decree was issued within the Daming Palace. An order to hunt down and kill emerged from the innermost reaches of the palace, placing her former comrades in mortal danger. Meanwhile, a hidden hand was at work behind the scenes, forcing her into a deadly trap.

And the chaos had only been quelled a year ago.

In the fourteenth year of Tianbao, An Lushan raised his army in Fanyang. The glorious Tang dynasty's dream shattered, and the land endured nearly eight years of warfare. Later generations would call it the An Lushan Rebellion.

The reclusive “Drunken Immortal of Chang'an,” who lived at the Moonlit Abode in Zhaoxing Ward, Chang'an, led his disciples to the battlefield to offer aid. His third disciple, He Zigui, took her sword into the secret camp to carry out assassinations and other missions of intrigue. She later received the title of general and gathered the jianghu's displaced wanderers under her command, calling them “Phantoms.”

But the world is full of unforeseen turns. As the chaos drew to a close, old friends passed away, and the “Phantoms” disbanded, scattering across the land, their whereabouts and fates unknown. After the war, He Zigui returned to the Moonlit Abode wounded, broken and despondent. She never set foot outside again.

A year later, a letter and a Mystic Eagle Talisman set things in motion. She donned her old battle robes and took up the Red Dust Sword once more. After all these years, she left Chang'an again, first to honor a promise made by those who had entrusted their lives to one another, and second to keep a vow made to her former sect.

The swordswoman traveled a thousand miles, yet an invisible net sprang from that letter. In Hongdu and beneath the moonlight in Yangzhou, identical letters in identical handwriting drew her into the undercurrents surging through the Jiangnan Circuit, entangling her in old jianghu affairs sealed away for over twenty years.

As she travels west from Jiangnan, will her confused sense of purpose and her path become clear through what she sees and does along the way?

With only a sword in her hand, how should she find peace?

She has set out with her sword, but where does the path she holds dear lie?

“The Red Dust Sword holds the soul of wind and moon, yet it belongs in the world of mortals.”

[Blurb]

“The living are travelers passing through; the dead are homeward bound.”

She arrived as winter snow fell over Chang'an, and departed beneath the clear moon of the old capital.

“Thinly clad, I came bearing snow; I left with sleeves full of fallen blossoms.”

The smoke and flames of war, the years rushing by, all the turmoil and strife: once more, this sword emerges, bearing the soul of wind and moon, carrying the spirit of the mortal world.

Old friends come and go; life and death bring hardship. Those eyes, tempered by hardship and loyalty, finally see through layer upon layer of illusion and mist, glimpsing the obsession that has entangled generations for centuries.

She has walked through a desolate jianghu, through a sky filled with the flames of war, and across this land of ashes left by more than a decade of turmoil.

Yet life is a journey against the current. Where does the road ahead lead?

Still, someone will pluck their sword and sing, heading against the light of heaven and returning with a spark of fire.

A cup of wine in the spring breeze among peach and plum blossoms; a lamp in the jianghu's autumn rain, ten years on.

“A cup of wine in the spring breeze among peach and plum blossoms; a lamp in the jianghu's autumn rain, ten years on.” From Huang Tingjian's “A Letter to Huang Jifu.”

Only the prologue is in first person; the main story is in third person. Some chapters are already written, and I'll revise as I go. I've been working on this story for five or six years, and it's time to let it see the light. The title comes from Xuan Ding's Qing-dynasty collection Tales of Autumn Lamps in the Night Rain, and draws on the meaning of “a lamp in the jianghu's autumn rain, ten years on.” I was also inspired to revise it after seeing the phrase “a sparse lamp in the night rain.” The title symbolizes the people who hold fast to the fire in their hearts through the night rain, scattered like sparse lamps across the land, yet still shining brightly.

The main storyline follows He Zigui as she searches for her heart and asks questions of the Dao. The underlying storyline is about change in the jianghu, which the protagonist uncovers as the plot unfolds. It has an ensemble-cast feel. As one line puts it: “A gallery of deranged idealists.”

A slow burn, driven mainly by the plot. There are several romantic pairings, but romance is not a major focus and mainly serves the story. In both the main and secondary pairings, the woman is older. He Zigui's main pairing is a powerful couple, both delightfully unhinged, though the woman is stronger. (The main pairing takes center stage from Volume Two, though both characters appear in the prologue: He Zigui x Xiao Chenbi. The woman takes the lead, but this is not a gender-role reversal. I list the woman first because she will always be my top priority, and they're my characters, so I make the rules. The new character profile is very abstract, so don't read that. Read my notes instead.)

I've been developing this book for ten years. The character designs and worldbuilding have been revised many times over, so any answers in old comments about the setting can be considered obsolete. Feel free to come and go; the final version is the one settled on in September 2024. (The original outline was already abandoned while I was writing Volume One, so I don't even know if some things are still in it. In short, I'll write what I write, and if something makes it to the end, then it does.)

This is primarily a wuxia novel, set in the Tang dynasty, mostly during the Middle Tang, with some earlier events in the High Tang. I've done my best to research the history, but wuxia inevitably includes some fantasy. There are also a few fantasy and cosmic-horror elements connected to the broader worldbuilding. The author is still working on both brainpower and writing skills, and is busy with school, but will update as often as possible, especially when there's free time.

Theme: Though tiny as dust, keep walking the road ahead. In this jianghu, some sing with swords in hand, some never waver in their devotion, some sacrifice themselves for their ideals, and some walk alone. Together, they carry on the light that has never gone out, kept alive since ancient times by generations of people who flew like moths into the flame.