Side Doors and Crooked Paths

Side Doors and Crooked Paths is a suspense novel by Si Bushuang, a signed author on Motie Chinese, serialized there from 2014 and running about 1.07 million Chinese characters. Built on the secret crafts of folk artisans and performers, the story sets up a hidden underworld of the "Eight Side Doors" concealed within ordinary city life: the Lu Ban sect, masters of curses, mechanisms, and ward objects; the Shadow sect, whose shadow-puppet performers can steal and rob tombs by means of shadows; the Qingfu sect, devoted to spirit communication, soul summoning, and planchette divination, its ranks all women; the Sun-Swapping sect, which gathers children born under special horoscopes and reincarnated lamas to extend others' lifespans and change their fates; the Elixir Cauldron sect, which uses men and women as each other's crucibles; the Hundred Elimination sect, skilled in gu poison, toxins, and witchcraft; the Spirit Beast sect, which tames and trains spirit companions alongside their masters; and, needless to say, the Corpse Driving sect. After Liberation these sects seemed to vanish, but in truth they never disappeared—they are right beside us, and their world has closed in on "me." The novel is told in first person: lured in by a fellow townsman, the protagonist is drawn into a string of bizarre incidents, survives the Liwan corpse yard and the dharma duel at Liurong Temple, and step by step discovers his ties to a family of carpenters. Following the clues of a Lu Ban ruler, he meets extraordinary figures of the underworld, adopts a sickly black cat, ventures into the Spirit Beast sect's basement, and uncovers layer upon layer of hidden history; the third volume moves into deep mountain caves, where he passes through cavern palaces and secret divine shrines and finally grasps the origins of Lu Ban's methods. The book sets the special skills of folk artisans against the divide between orthodox Daoist cultivation and the side doors, combining the tension of a suspense chase with a portrait of how traditional craftsmen survive in secret in modern society.