Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is a true story, a history book disguised as a collection of strange tales that has fooled countless people.
Everything you know about the stories in Strange Tales may really have happened on the very land where we live. You may find this unbelievable, utterly absurd, but it is the truth.
Children grab a rope hanging in midair and fly into the clouds to steal peaches from the legendary Celestial Palace. The heavenly generals punish them, tearing them to pieces and casting them down to the mortal world, only for them to leap from a basket and come back to life at their father's spell.
The leader of the White Lotus Sect has a magical mirror that can reveal the past and future, and show a person's wealth and station. He commands paper soldiers and horses to march and fight, and makes paper kites capable of carrying people through the air.
Monks and Daoist priests with spiritual powers can make plants grow quickly and bear fruit in an instant. With a shake of their bodies, they can transform into completely different faces and outfits. They can turn invisible and burrow underground, contain Mount Sumeru in a mustard seed and hide the sun and moon in a pot. They can capture demons and monsters, turn things in paintings into reality, transmute stone into gold and mercury into silver, and know the past and future.
The Great Sage Equal to Heaven, Erlang Shen, the Ten Kings of Hell, Nie Xiaoqian... Almost every bizarre story you have read in Strange Tales has a living person behind it, someone who truly existed in history. Even countless myths you have known by heart since childhood, which you thought were merely the products of the ancients' vivid but unrealistic imaginations, may really have happened on this very land.
My name is Bai Zhaoming. I will lead you in lifting the veil of mystery from Strange Tales.
The foolish and ignorant regard me as a god. They bow and worship me, believing that I know and can do everything, and that I am immortal.
But there are no ghosts or gods in this world.
The strange and cruel human heart is often more terrifying than the elusive ghosts and gods.
---According to plan, this book has an official male lead, but he is only there because the plot requires him. He is not the focus of the story, and is closer to an important supporting character. I don't even know if this can be called a romance. I've heard readers in the no-romance category hate relationship plots, and there isn't another category for it, so I have no choice but to list it this way... The author spent nearly a year putting this book together. Their notes and research add up to two or three hundred thousand words, but the work is still far from done. It is absolutely more ambitious and intricate than the author's previous book, with a far richer and more complete imagination. It may be the most fantastical novel you've ever read, but whether the author can finish it and emerge like a butterfly from its cocoon depends on their own efforts. (I will do my best to bring it to you soon.)
Theme: Learn from history, and never forget.
