Live-Streaming Intangible Cultural Heritage, Starting with Mortise and Tenon

[Updates may be irregular lately. New chapters at 9 p.m.] My next novel will be The Monster-Hunting Livestream. Check the author page to the right and add it to your reading list →

As the only heir to a traditional craft in the twenty-first century, Pei Liang died suddenly and unexpectedly woke up as her namesake in a poverty-stricken interstellar slum.

The bad news: She started out in the Bureau of Supervision, was fined 3,000, and was dirt poor.

The news that was half good and half bad: Thousands of years in the future, interstellar culture had suffered a break in transmission, and intangible cultural heritage had vanished. Only a few old records remained. On the bright side, she could livestream.

Pei Liang made her choice without hesitation.

She'd return to her old trade and start with a livestream.

So just as everyone thought intangible cultural heritage had been lost forever, a livestream channel called [Ordinary as Can Be] appeared out of nowhere. The streamer boldly declared that she would recreate intangible cultural heritage!

She had the materials ready, and an attention-grabbing gimmick too.

The interstellar viewers exploded: What a ridiculous claim! You think you can recreate intangible cultural heritage just like that? Aren't you afraid you'll bite your tongue?

Pei Liang turned her knife, took up a piece of wood, and began carving a mortise-and-tenon design. In a few short minutes, despite the grainy video, she turned an utterly ordinary piece of wood into a 24-hole interlocking puzzle with just a few strokes! As light passed through it, shadows shifted and swirled!

Pei Liang: "Who was going to bite their tongue?"

Viewers: "...Me."

Next came the Eleven-Faced Guanyin. The central face was compassionate, with three wrathful faces to the left and three faces showing white teeth to the right. Behind them was a face of raucous laughter, and above them a face preaching the Dharma. Together, all eleven faces left the viewers stunned by the fierce visage revealed in the light! It looked as though spirits and gods had stepped out of the wall!

Other streamers spent half a day carving a shoddy imitation, but she could reproduce the work of heaven's own master craftsmen with a lift of her hand!

The speechless interstellar viewers: "???" Seriously, how is this reasonable?

Who could have known she'd go even further after that? A gilded shrine to the gods, a depiction of hell: the viewers were utterly stunned, and scholars who watched wanted to pack their things and flee overnight!

[Holy crap! Is this a divine miracle? You're livestreaming miracles under the cover of recreating intangible cultural heritage, aren't you?]

[My knees are done for today! Nobody stop me!]

[New viewer: Where can I find the replay of the livestream with the gilded shrine?]

The few viewers who still had their wits about them frantically mashed the exit button, only to find it had been removed. "Oh no, she's got us trapped!"

This supposedly "ordinary" livestream spread through the stars like a virus at a terrifying speed!

Until every forum thread started with: [What is God Pei livestreaming today?]

Reading guide:

1. The main plot focuses on her career. The male lead is basically a pretty flower vase and a background character. Also, beware: this is a very long novel.

2. Livestream setting, with lots of chat comments. Updates are fixed for 9 p.m.

3. It's my own take on interstellar fiction.

4. The livestreams in the story will be shorter, and are not the same length as real livestreams. They're adapted to the story's setting, so please don't take them literally.

Upcoming novel

The Monster-Hunting Livestream. Check the author page to the right and add it to your reading list →

Blurb: Before she turned eighteen, Pei Yun thought she had been given the tragic heroine's script: both parents dead, born with a spiritual constitution but sealed by eight restrictions, and as weak as a baby, unable to cultivate.

After turning eighteen, she realized she had actually been handed the good-for-nothing's broken-engagement script: her engagement was called off, her uncle drove her out, she couldn't even get her parents' ashes back, and she still had to scrape together tuition money.

Not only did she start at good-for-nothing difficulty, but one misfortune after another kept piling up.

Pei Yun: "..." Do you think this is a match-three game?

As she was about to set off alone to study, carrying her parents' ashes, Pei Yun accepted her fate and finally agreed to the demand made by the System in her mind. She might as well fight for herself.

[Monster-Hunting System successfully bound. A livestream room has been opened for you.]

[Livestream points can be exchanged for or used to draw items of equal value. Room number: 9949.]

The one difference was that this time, she finally saw the beings that had existed only in rumors and oral tales: monsters of every kind, human and otherwise, from ghosts and spirits to snakes and gods. Those who hunted them were collectively known as monster hunters.

Here, ordinary people encounter the supernatural, celestial masters belong to different schools, and monsters run rampant.

And Pei Yun has only herself and her sword.

Seal the corpse coffins, slay the mountain ghosts.

No evil spirit can approach.

The livestream room was sent into a frenzy, and points poured in like a river!

[Congratulations! You have obtained an [Unassigned, Upgradeable] Heaven-tier skill!]

[Congratulations! You have obtained one [Heavenly Origin Pill]!]

[Congratulations! You have obtained a [Spirit Pact], allowing you to randomly draw an ancient monster!]

And so Pei Yun went all the way down the path of treating Earth-tier pills like candy and burning Heaven-tier skills like firewood. It was simply her destiny, so what if she used it to change the world?

[I have a sword that can slay demons, ghosts, and wandering immortals!]

Theme: Exploring the challenges facing the transmission of tradition as times change