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meganbmooreThis is the last storyarc of this series, and probably the one with the simplest plot. Xin is a fox demon trying to earn her way into heaven by performing good deeds in a nearby town while living in the forest with her father and sisters. Along the way, she meets and falls in love with a scholar named Sheng, and the two take in a waif named Lu Er. For reasons I didn’t quite understand, Xin was opposed to admitting her feelings for Sheng, resulting in her sisters and Lu Er concocting all sorts of schemes to get them together. (My favorite was when one sister, Hu Mei, who had previously tried to eat Sheng, forced him to pretend she was attacking him so Xin would run to his rescue.)
This is one of those stories that starts all light and fluffy and then sideswipes you with torture and angst and people dying right and left. At one point, I was pointedly reminded that this came from the person who decided that Chinese Paladin, which basically started out a wuxia RomCom, should end with an angsty and broken Hu Ge wandering ancient!fantasy China with everyone he knew dead except for his newborn daughter, after he spent a while wandering through a garden, cradling his wife’s blood-drenched corpse. I’m happy to report, though, that this never reaches those depths, and actually ends happily.
I liked all the stories in this anthology series, but if I were to rank them, I’d probably go: Xia Nu, Lian Cheng, Huan Niang, and then Xin Shi Si Niang.
This is one of those stories that starts all light and fluffy and then sideswipes you with torture and angst and people dying right and left. At one point, I was pointedly reminded that this came from the person who decided that Chinese Paladin, which basically started out a wuxia RomCom, should end with an angsty and broken Hu Ge wandering ancient!fantasy China with everyone he knew dead except for his newborn daughter, after he spent a while wandering through a garden, cradling his wife’s blood-drenched corpse. I’m happy to report, though, that this never reaches those depths, and actually ends happily.
I liked all the stories in this anthology series, but if I were to rank them, I’d probably go: Xia Nu, Lian Cheng, Huan Niang, and then Xin Shi Si Niang.