Phoenix Tears

Phoenix Tears is a full-length supernatural romance by Peng Liurong, a star writer for the magazine Boys & Girls, following her earlier novel Lost Soul. The standalone edition was substantially revised from the magazine serialization, adding characters and plotlines and deepening the romantic thread, with illustrations by Qing Yu. The story opens with the sudden death of the narrator's grandfather. The old man had once mentioned that during the War of Resistance a sharpshooter single-handedly took the heads of ten Japanese second lieutenants and saved his life with her own blood—and that this woman's face bore an eerie resemblance to his wife's. That old tale acts as a fuse, drawing the grandson, Xu Qingting, into the order of another world. On arriving at university, Xu Qingting is attacked by a jiangshi and thereby meets medical student Huang Ruyue. Huang Ruyue has another identity: a Tianshi who takes on bizarre and uncanny cases for high fees. The jiangshi awakened from an ancient tomb is revealed to be the powerful Ghost King Mingyue. As a string of incidents unfolds—possession, soul-summoning, insect fetuses, robberies—the bonds among the three grow clear, and every clue points back a thousand years. The beautiful, dangerous Mingyue; the dashing, resolute Huang Ruyue; the sunny, naive Xu Qingting—all three are entangled by the same mysterious force and driven toward inescapable fates. The book advances its suspense through unit-style chapters, shifting between horror and romance, and closes on the central image of the phoenix tears.