The Eternal Return of the Boat

A distress letter arrives at Qiwang’s abandoned harbor. The paper is new, but the port it was sent from has been cut off from the present world for more than eight hundred years. There is no treasure map inside, only six people stranded on a maintenance platform. They say a ship must reach the shore before the next tidal surge. Lu Chenzhou, the old captain moored at the abandoned harbor, recognizes the signature at the end of the letter. He recognizes the severed sea route, too. He was the one who ordered it cut off all those years ago. And so an old ship puts out to sea once more. In places erased from the charts, people still farm, repair lamps, and write letters. Some want to leave, some refuse to go, and others have long since stopped waiting to return home. Those who make it back alive soon discover that their hometown is still there, but someone else’s family now lives in the old house they remember. Bringing them aboard is only the beginning.