Chapter One: The Monkey Steals the Book

“Lazybones, get up! Lazybones, get up!” Wu Ming felt as though he had been awakened by the cold, likely from a fever. His vision was blurry, his whole body ached, and his head was heavy with dizziness.

Wu Ming squinted weakly, groping around for his alarm clock. After fumbling for a long time without finding it, he forced his groggy eyes open and looked around. Only then did he realize he had slept the entire night on the floor. No wonder he’d caught a cold—it was freezing in the middle of winter. A puddle of spilled instant noodles had dried on the floor, the yellowish grease congealing on the power strip, making for a rather disgusting sight.

Then Wu Ming remembered: he’d been knocked out by an electric shock. Lucky to still be alive, really. But the thought only made him feel more desolate. He was already twenty-eight, still without a girlfriend. If he had a live-in girlfriend, things like this wouldn’t happen. Living alone, who knew—one day he might die in his rented apartment and no one would notice.

He sighed and started to tidy up. At that moment, his phone rang. Fortunately, Wu Ming always charged his phone as soon as he got home; otherwise, with the way these new smartphones devoured power, it would have been dead and shut down long ago.

He glanced at the caller ID: “Chubby.” Chubby was a colleague, a second-generation rich kid who drove a sports car to work every day. As he liked to say, his salary wasn’t even enough to cover gas. He only worked there because his father forced him to, to keep him from mixing with the wrong crowd.

“Wu Ming! The T-Rex is furious. Why haven’t you shown up for work in two days? He’s threatening to dock your pay! I offered to put in a leave request for you but he wouldn’t go for it!” As soon as Wu Ming answered, Chubby’s voice blared through the phone.

“What time is it? I just woke up with a cold. Let him dock it if he wants.” None of them liked their supervisor, the T-Rex. His real name was Fang Baolong, but he was mean and fierce, always starting fights over the pettiest of matters. So everyone called him the T-Rex.

“It’s already two thirty in the afternoon. Are you alright? Which hospital are you in? I’ll come visit!” Wu Ming felt a little moved by Chubby’s concern.

“I’m at home. What’s the matter, you want to buy me lunch?”

“Sure! I’ll come pick you up in a bit. I’ll use it as an excuse to tell the T-Rex I’m meeting a client. Just seeing his sour face puts me in a foul mood!”

Before Wu Ming could finish, Chubby had already hung up in a hurry.

“Wait, where’s my Classic of Mountains and Seas?” Wu Ming remembered putting the book on the shelf last night. Strange! He searched everywhere but couldn’t find the outrageously expensive edition he’d bought—at least, it was outrageously expensive to him. He’d scrimped and saved for months, squeezing out every penny to buy it.

Suddenly, he heard a commotion by the window. Rushing over, he saw a gap in the curtains and the window slightly ajar. Could there have been a thief? Not that he had much worth stealing, but just in case, Wu Ming grabbed a mop and crept toward the window. Pushing it open, he was startled to see a white-eared monkey hanging from the sill, chattering shrilly at him. He was so shocked he fell backward onto the floor.

The monkey swung itself into the room with a flick of its hand, hopped to the door, and darted out, clutching Wu Ming’s Classic of Mountains and Seas.

Wu Ming sprang to his feet and dashed after it, tossing aside the mop. That book had cost him three thousand yuan—he couldn’t let the monkey get away!

When he reached the staircase, he heard a loud crash. Rounding the corner, he saw Chubby getting out of his car, looking both exasperated and concerned. The white-eared monkey had been clipped by Chubby’s car, dropped the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and dashed into the little grove in the community garden, vanishing without a trace.

Chubby was stunned, then began inspecting the dent in his sports car with a pained expression.

Wu Ming hurried over to reclaim his precious book and examined it carefully. The exquisite carved wooden binding had cracked from the impact. From inside, a thin bronze mirror slipped out. On its reverse side were a few words inscribed in an unfamiliar script, yet somehow Wu Ming could read them: “Mirror of Mountains and Seas.”

“Man, that meal I’m treating you to just got a lot more expensive. That was my dad’s car! With the dent it’s got now, I’m in for a marathon lecture when I get home. By the way, was that really a monkey just now?” Chubby noticed Wu Ming staring at the back of the bronze mirror in a daze and gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder.

“Yeah, I think it was a monkey.” Wu Ming glanced in the direction the monkey had fled, feeling that something about all this was strangely out of the ordinary.