Neck and Neck

A family genealogy chronicling nearly four hundred years in the Jiangnan hills says that the world of the living is called the “First Land,” while the place where life is eternal is called the “Second Land.” The genealogy claims that, in the time of the Great Flood myth, a world between the First and Second Lands was created jointly by the Purple Magpie and a divine shaman. This “Purple Magpie Realm” held nothing but the fragrance of herbs, ripening grain, ringing songs, and kindhearted people. Yet five thousand one hundred and thirty years later, a divine shaman who had betrayed the Second Land became a demon, bringing stench, hunger, and malice... During the great migration of the Purple Magpie people, Goldenwater Valley, a ring-shaped basin entrusted by the divine shaman to the Jin clan, became another world between the First and Second Lands. What made a divine shaman, once immortal and imperishable, willingly become a demon doomed to eternal ruin? How did Goldenwater Valley withstand the demon’s repeated invasions? Did the Jin Hai clan, Jin Dasheng, and even Jin Huanghua truly become immortal, imperishable divine shamans? The Between the First and Second Lands trilogy, The Fragrant First Land, The First Land in Turmoil, and The Fall of the Second Land, will immerse you in the romantic spirit of Chu, inherited from Qu Yuan, and reveal every wondrous secret...