Of Swords and Parasols

At last! A manhua I like that isn’t impossible to find and by a defunct publisher!! Well, I like Four Constables, too, but it reads bother quickly and stilted to me, and I freely confess that I’m mainly interested in one aspect of it.

Cai-Sheng is a fox spirit, but unlike other fox spirits, who must wait 500 years to be able to take on a male of female form and require assistance to be able to take on a human form, she was born with a human form and will be able to take on a male form after only two hundred years, and is the daughter of a divine fox and a nine-hundred-year-old nice-tailed fox. Taken and raised by a clan of fox spirits who were once ordinary fox spirits who want her to father their children once she can take on a male form so that their clan can survive, Cai-Sheng isn’t allowed to interact with anyone outside of her clan.

One day, however, she sneaks away and meets two human children, Duo Xi and Xiao-Que, who become her only friends. When the two are injured protecting her, her sister (in the context of the two having the same master, not biological) Hui-Nyang marks them where they were injured so that Cai-Sheng will be able to find them after they’ve reincarnated and repay her debt. Two hundred years later, Cai-Sheng meets Duo Xi, now a third-rate exorcist named Yun-Shi, defeat a demon who has cursed Xiao-Hui, now Su Ping, the sheltered daughter of a judge. Realizing that Yun-Shi has a crush on Ping, Cai-Sheng decides to repay her debt by match making them, not realizing that the sheltered Ping fell for her male form when she rescued her.

It has the makings of a decently-original complication for a triangle, but doesn’t quite seem to be going that way, and while the tone is rather light so far, there are indications that the main plot surrounding Cai-Sheng’s nature and origins, not to mention the fox clan are rather dark. It’s also steeped in mythology and folklore, and I absolutely adore the fashions.