The book gives me a childhood.
Before the guardian, a novelist gives Zhong Kui parents, study, and a life measured by expectation.
Read episode →SERIAL FICTION · SEASON 01
The book
and the door.
Five notes following the internal story order of Tang Zhong Kui quan zhuan: from family and study to the examination, the underworld, a new commission, and the dream that becomes an image.
How to read this season
Every episode uses the voice of Zhong Kui, but none asks you to mistake a Ming novel for a Tang biography. Each page labels its source, names the textual boundary, and links out when the novel borrows a tradition older than itself.
The examination I cannot claim.
A life-changing failure belongs to the novel, however persuasive its emotional logic feels.
Read episode →The office beneath the world.
The dead have registers too—and the novel lets one wrong name expose a system's failure.
Read episode →The job that sent me back.
A sword and an iron tally turn a judged scholar into a delegated guardian.
Read episode →The dream and the picture.
The best-known scene, read twice: once as a novel, and once against the older transmitted account.
Read episode →