The Cunning Path of Fuxi

Ye Gongzi

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Word count
741.8K words

Tags

Featured Fiction Mystery and Suspense Criminal InvestigationSuspensePolice ProtagonistHidden LineageBrain TeaserFirst PersonYin-Yang Five Elements

Summary

Mo Lijia, a rookie police officer, takes on a bizarre missing-person case. After cracking it alongside his new female partner, Bai Xiaoqing, he unexpectedly comes into possession of a strange ancient bamboo slip. From then on, supernatural cases pile up one after another: missing children, a corpse that stirs at midnight, men and women mysteriously slain, an underground tomb chamber haunted by ghosts and monsters, and two more bamboo slips that surface in turn. Once assembled, the slips gradually unravel the mystery of his origins, a mysterious and ancient organization comes to light, and an even more startling secret lurks behind it all. The protagonist's father died inexplicably in a morgue when he was a child, the cause unknown. Determined to become a police officer and uncover the truth, he relies on the arts of yin and yang recorded in his family's inherited Records of the Yin Gate to deal with ever-escalating paranormal events.

Editor's review

This is a first-person suspense novel built on a skeleton of criminal investigation and fleshed out with the occult and folk customs. Its appeal lies in the deductive twists of a chain of eerie cases, the setup of the ancient bamboo slips and the family's yin-yang arts, and the long-running mystery of the protagonist's origins and the secret organization. It suits readers who enjoy mind-bending supernatural tales and detective work from a police perspective. Its weaknesses are a colloquial style, paranormal explanations that cluster in setting exposition, and a pace that often lingers on buildup, which may not thrill readers hungry for fast-paced gratification.

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Reading tips

  1. Read in chapter order; the early groundwork for the Records of the Yin Gate is key to understanding later cases.
  2. Watch how the three bamboo slips correspond to clues about the protagonist's origins, and jot down foreshadowing as you read.
  3. The supernatural elements lean on folk explanations; read them alongside the investigative thread rather than focusing only on ghostly plotlines.

FAQ

What genre is this book? Criminal-investigation supernatural suspense: a first-person police protagonist solving eerie cases, with yin-yang arts and an origin mystery.
What special ability does the protagonist have? The yin-yang arts from his family's Records of the Yin Gate, which let him use ancient methods to probe scenes from a victim's final moments, among other things.
Is there a romance line? The protagonist and his female partner Bai Xiaoqing work cases together, mainly as partners.

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About the author

Ye Gongzi Author

Ye Gongzi is a Chinese online author about whom limited public information is available; the library holds one work by this author. That work, The Wondrous Way of Fuxi (Fu Xi Gui Dao), is commonly grouped under premium fiction and mystery or suspense, a classification that suggests the book builds its narrative around suspense and puzzle-solving. Since details such as nationality and dates of birth and death are not clearly recorded, it is difficult to outline the author's life or creative development, and no speculation about their background is appropriate. On the available evidence, Ye Gongzi's writing appears to lean toward building an atmosphere of suspense on traditional cultural imagery: the name Fuxi in the title carries a distinctly classical flavor, setting off the eerie, shifting connotations suggested by the wondrous way. Readers who wish to understand the author's style may begin directly with this work.