A Manual for Pursuing Cranes

In the autumn of Yongning Year 23, rain fell without pause across Qingzhou.

Deep in Bitter Bamboo Mountain, a woman's corpse vanished under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind only a pair of embroidered shoes beneath a pine tree. White cranes circled the mountain, the old temple had been closed for years, and a cold case from seventeen years ago came back to light.

Nineteen-year-old Zhu Yu had only wanted to look after the little courtyard her parents left her, copy books, prepare medicine, and live in peace. Then one day, someone brought her an old notebook left behind by her late mother. Its pages were filled with strange accounts of mountains and rivers, bizarre occurrences, and forbidden things. The handwriting belonged to several different people, and it was impossible to tell what was true.

The notebook warned: If you ever see a white crane, do not call it by name.

Yet the white crane she encountered could not only speak, but also called itself Wenshuo.

After that, a woman who vanished in the mountains, a swordsman who came searching for someone, old belongings no one claimed, and those who had yet to return home gradually led her to stories buried by the passage of time.

People say that immortal cranes know the way home, but they do not know that some people can spend their whole lives searching and still never find the road they came by.

And the hardest thing in this world to lay to rest may not be life or death. Perhaps it is simply a promise that was never kept.