The Rat Under Da Hao Refuses to Join the Demon Register

[Beast transformation + no System + ensemble cast and mind games + folklore and the supernatural + power struggles + slow burn] This is an age when even mouse holes are written into law. The Legalists rule, with the Hundred Schools in supporting roles. Any bird, beast, insect, or fish that steals spiritual power and gains intelligence is branded in the demon registry, stripped of its property, and condemned to serve for eternity. Demons branded in the registry bear their assigned status on their souls. They forget who they are and willingly become the government’s beasts or the army’s bait. The day he was reborn, he became a mouse in a granary in Yunzhong Commandery. He could read. He could make out the names of the gods on spirit tablets and the statutes in bamboo records. He could also see what no one else could: contract threads. Contracts, status, incense offerings, and karma all appeared to him as translucent strands, stretching from humans, demons, and gods to weave an inescapable web. A mouse outside the registry, starting out from the rafters of a government granary. He slips through cracks in the law, tears up unjust contracts, pursues the Way alongside the Hundred Schools, and contends with the Underworld. By the end, only one question remains: Who signed the countless contracts in this world? And what gives them the right to make those contracts impossible to tear up?