Liao Zhai Night Talk

"A Rainy Night in a Liaozhai Studio" is a collection of classical short stories that inherits the strange stories of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It uses the night rain in the south of the Yangtze River as the narrative background, and uses five psychic artifacts, such as inkstones, paper figures, ancient pottery, porcelain pillows, and copper scales, to connect five mysterious stories about the human world. A scholar pawned his memory for fame, but ended up in a high position but forgot about his previous relationship; a scholar cut paper and became his wife, and after three years of hard work, she turned into a butterfly to repay his kindness; an antique dealer brought Tang terracotta warriors into the mountains, and heard the souls of thousand-year-old souls complaining about their grievances through music. The whole book abandons the clichés of fighting between gods and demons, and focuses on using instruments to convey the Tao, asking about fame, infatuation, justice and the importance of one's heart amidst the sound of pattering rain. Each story begins with an obsession, and finally wakes up to the vast blank space. There is no cheap perfection, only the readers are left to judge their own good and evil. Under the shell of strange monsters, there is a deep reflection on the choices of human nature.