Chronicles of the Otherworldly Imperial City

What a raw deal. Just as he was about to attain enlightenment, Tang Ning found life absurd. Looking at this strange world and this unfamiliar dynasty, his thoughts raced like ten thousand horses.

The scene he had imagined, surrounded by beauties and free from financial worries, never came to pass. Instead, beneath a great locust tree at Yunshan Temple, a drunken old monk and a young man in blue robes sat together by lamplight, the boy gazing into the distance from a high place.

One day, at the temple gate, the old monk stood beneath the Yunshan Temple sign and said, “Go down the mountain.”

The young man in blue bowed and departed. The old monk's eyelids lifted slightly, his eyes bright as stars.

Feathers of snow drifted down, but the young man in blue left no tracks.