The twenty-eighth year of the Jinde reign, summer.
Sang Yu heads to the capital to fulfill her mother's dying wish. Along the way, she passes through Leishan Village, an abandoned village haunted by ghosts.
Legend says that years ago, something terribly ill-omened was unearthed there. In a single night, hundreds of villagers successively bled from all seven orifices and dropped dead.
That night, Sang Yu gets trapped in the haunted village and cannot find a way out. After wandering around, she glimpses a faint, wavering green light among the collapsed beams and crumbling walls. When she draws closer, she discovers an old lamp with a green-glazed body.
To her horror, the green lamp can actually speak!
It threatens her in a low voice: "If you don't want to die here, you must take me north to Guangling."
Sang Yu is already passing through Guangling, so she agrees without a second thought.
But as soon as they leave Leishan County, the green lamp starts clamoring to detour to Huaizhou.
"I'm not going. It's out of my way." Sang Yu scowls.
"It's just a short detour. How is that out of your way?"
"Are you going or not?"
Sang Yu remains unmoved.
"Fine! Don't come crying to me later!" The green lamp makes a final threat.
But no sooner have the words left its mouth than a blind, flying ghost head darts out of the woods at midnight. Sang Ning is nearly scared to death. She yells at the green lamp, "You bring nothing but bad luck!"
*
Huo Wujie comes from a prominent family in Guangling. He was born with a chronic illness that has never responded to treatment. A wandering monk even once declared that he wouldn't live to see his twentieth birthday.
So the Huo family spoils him rotten. Everyone in Guangling knows the young master of the Huo family.
But honestly, he's impossible to like!
From childhood, he's stolen chickens and dogs and indulged in every sort of petty crime. He also loves wandering around brothels and is a compulsive gambler, squandering the family fortune.
One day, for some reason, he announces that an immortal visited him in a dream and told him to go to Leishan in search of a treasure called the Bronze Ghost Lamp, so he can bring blessings to the people of Guangling.
The people of Guangling rush to spread the news: The jinx is finally leaving!
Beneath the eager gaze of the whole city, Huo Wujie cries out in anguish: "The people cast me aside like worn-out goods, yet I cherish this floating life like pearls and jade!"
But once he leaves, he vanishes without a trace.
Reader's Guide
1. An ancient supernatural road trip: a flying ghost head in Huaizhou, the clothes of the dead in Hezhou, a child born from a coffin in Guangling, and a woman in a vase in Jiangdu.
2. The title and synopsis are inspired by the Qing dynasty poet Huang Jingren's "Dian Jiang Chun: Fine Grass in the Empty Woods." The original line is: "Dimly, I see a single ghostly lamp, revealing a peach-blossom face."
Theme: Persevere and keep improving yourself, even in the depths of adversity.
