Reimagining Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
A liberal arts student finds herself transported to a world teeming with demons and spirits—how can she overcome all obstacles and settle down to farm in peace? “Minister of Agriculture, Ao Xing! Take your yakshas and bring us rain—no less than forty millimeters!” “Fox spirits of the Department of Transportation! You need to set up a hundred more haystacks to meet the citizens’ travel demands! We must make teleportation accessible to the common folk!” “Skin Painter! Stop thinking only about eating—come over here and give me a back massage.” “For the young demons with lower intelligence, we can consider offering bonus points, and if they possess special abilities, they can be recruited through a special selection process.” “Our slogan is: United under the guidance of the Liaozhai Representative Assembly, humans and demons live in harmony and prosper together!”
Reimagining Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
Chapter One: The Arrival of the Transmigrant in the Remote Mountain Village—Xu Wenshan Is Forced to Attend a Matchmaking Session
In the cradle of the Zi River, nestled within the mountain valleys, there was a place called Deer and Crane Ravine. The ravine was small, home to barely two hundred families, and the largest among them was the Xu family.
The head of the Xu family, Xu Changshui, was the greatest landowner in the ravine; eight-tenths of all the land belonged to him. He had only one son, Xu Wenshan.
Xu Changshui was the overlord of Deer and Crane Ravine, and Xu Wenshan, his only son, was the local young tyrant. He’d been used to throwing his weight around since he was a child, yet one day, without warning, he stopped.
People began to say he had gone mad.
Xu Wenshan no longer behaved like a landlord’s son. He no longer indulged in feasts, or spent his days playing with crickets and fighting dogs. Instead, he muttered incomprehensible words under his breath, pestering people with questions—what year was it, who was the emperor?
Even the only scholar in the ravine might not know who the current emperor was, and in any case, who cared? Who the emperor was made no difference to the people of Deer and Crane Ravine.
The rumor, “Young Master Xu has gone mad,” spread quickly throughout the valley. In time, even Xu Changshui heard of it, though he neither confirmed nor denied it. After all, this was his only son.
Only Xu Wenshan himself knew he wasn’t mad.
He knew he had transmigrated.
He came from Earth, from the year 2017—a world more wondrous than any paradise sung of in Deer and Crane Ravine’s old tales.
Now, having arrived in this unkno
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