The Torn Robe

The story takes place in 1936 on the Jiaodong Peninsula in Shandong. Zuo Dengfeng, a minor clerk at the Wendeng County culture office, is retaliated against after accidentally discovering his superior's affair and is banished to guard the abandoned Qingshui Temple in the Kunyu Mountains. In the ruined temple he meets Wu Xinyu, a lone woman who has lived alone for years and possesses Daoist arts; from wariness and testing each other they come to know and stand by each other, and in hunger and cold they become husband and wife. After their marriage, on the way down the mountain they rescue an old cat wearing a Shang-Zhou gold collar around its neck and name it "Thirteen." It is precisely this old cat that draws the Japanese biological warfare unit disguised as peddlers. The Japanese troops torture the couple in every way to seize the cat; at the critical moment Wu Xinyu uses her blood to drive her arts, and Zuo Dengfeng barely survives while his wife dies blood-drained. Grief-stricken, Zuo Dengfeng unexpectedly obtains the secret manual The Art of Yin and Yang, Life and Death from within a statue; after arduous training he dons a torn Daoist robe and sets out on the road of revenge. From a Japanese officer he learns the legend of the twelve earthly branches—"six yin, yin does not die; six yang, yang attains longevity"—and that gathering six yin-attribute branch inner cores can bring his dead wife back to life, so with the old cat Thirteen he travels across the land, exploring ancient tombs, visiting Daoist schools, and seeking inner cores. Meanwhile, the enemy is also searching for yang-attribute branches to seek immortality, and the conflicts between the two sides escalate. Set against the chaotic years of the Republic, the novel blends Daoist arts, suspense, adventure, and undying love, writing out one man's struggle between good and evil amid pain and obsession.