Tales of the Zhanhai Merfolk

After a thousand years, merfolk can take human form. Legend has it that merfolk lived during the prosperous Tang dynasty, able to assume human form and mingle among the common people. They came from the deep sea and could captivate the mind and read people’s dreams. But if they became as obsessed with something as humans were, they would form attachments and never be able to return to the deep sea.

In Zhanhai City, there is a psychologist named Lin Yuan who uses hypnosis and dreams to heal her patients. She is a mermaid who took human form a thousand years ago. In the flourishing Tang dynasty, more than thirteen hundred years ago, Lin Yuan first assumed human form and came to Chang’an, where she met a young monk named Fuyi and began a tragic romance. Lin Yuan gave Fuyi her mermaid pearl to show her determination to stay in Chang’an forever, but Fuyi betrayed her. He was devoted to the Buddha and wanted only to save Lin Yuan, whom he believed to be a demon. Fuyi later died a tragic death, and Lin Yuan, having lost her pearl, could never return to the deep sea. All she could do was remain in the human world, watching those around her endure one cycle of reincarnation and birth, aging, sickness, and death after another.