A Long Song of Bookish Affection

At the bottom of a stream, he found a green bottle. Inside it lay an entire sea of stars, and the door he could never push open, night after night.

Shuyi was an orphan carried by the stream to an old woman's doorstep. An old jade pendant rested against his heart, and no one knew where he came from. The night a massacre shattered Starfall Village, he finally understood what it meant to be cursed for possessing a treasure.

He enters a sect, revises ancient techniques, and breaks evil formations. The more smoothly he advances, the more it feels as if he is walking a path someone laid out ten thousand years ago. In a border town, a long-haired young woman helps him out of a bind with a white jade abacus. Smiling, she says, "I'll put it on your tab. One day, we'll settle it item by item."

The person in white behind the door says, "Don't come looking for me."

But he insists on searching anyway.