Yunlin

Cangwu Town is surrounded by mountains on three sides and faces the sea on one side. Fourteen-year-old Ayu is the "broom star" that no one in the town wants to deal with - his father disappeared at sea and his mother died young. He can only make a living by guarding the old stone carvings in the back mountain that no one cares about. One stormy night, he rescued a young dragon that was burned by thunder and fire in a crevice of a rock. The rules in the town are clearly written: if you see a dragon, you will be repaid, and anyone who conceals anything will be expelled from the town. Ayu did not report. He hid the dragon in an abandoned temple halfway up the mountain and raised it day by day. The dragon is not the fire-breathing monster in the storybook. It is afraid of thunder, picky about food, and its scales are covered with moss from the mountain behind the mud statue. It didn't recognize anyone, but gradually put its guard down on rainy nights when Ayu collected herbs, got water, and sat with it again and again. But a group of people "collecting mountain goods" came from outside the mountain, carrying iron cages on their horses. What they were asking about was not ginseng and Ganoderma lucidum, but "whether there have been any strange noises and lights in the mountains recently." Ayu recognized that look—not buying and selling, but hunting. People in the town have been afraid of dragons for hundreds of years. The stranger wanted to catch the dragon for more practical purposes. Caught in the middle, Ayu slowly figured out: what he was protecting was not a dragon, but a contract that the people in the town had long forgotten - the ancestors guarded the mountain, the spirit beasts guarded the town, and they did not offend each other. He doesn't know how to be a hero. He only knows how to look at the mountains, collect herbs, and sit with a dragon on thundery nights. But when the storm arose, it happened to be this man, and a dragon who was willing to stay, who managed to hold the whole thing together.