My Grandfather Is in the Mirror

Chen Luo is twenty-five and works as a graphic designer in Wuhan. His mother has been taking medication for years, his father has been missing for fourteen years, and all that remains at home is a bronze mirror that reflects no one. On the third day of a trip to Japan, the mirror suddenly grows hot. He wanders into the back hills of Kifune Shrine and sees members of the Kiku Sect holding a mirror casing with the same design. From that night on, faceless shikigami, assassins disguised as ordinary people, and his father’s fading reflection in the mirror all force their way into his life. His father left him only one instruction: Take the mirror back to Longhu Mountain within three years. The mirror holds more than his father: his grandfather, missing for even longer, is in there too. The mirror is split in two: its heart lies in the east, its shell in the west. An old address leads him to Tongfa House in Yokohama’s Chinatown, and brings to light a kitchen knife that has lain dormant for seventy-six years. Anbei Taizhen wants to open the door sealed shut in the old era, allowing ordinary people who were kept outside to cultivate as well. To do so, he is willing to release Wuzhiqi, sealed inside the mirror for 4,700 years. Chen Luo has only a broken mirror, a knife that exacts a price each time it is used, and a promise kept for twenty years by the owner of a noodle shop. Some want him to become a god. Others want him to become a blade. Chen Luo only wants to bring the old debts of three generations back into the world of the living, so that those who owe them can stand in the light and face judgment.