Take a step. Take a bow. Look around, how far you've come. For an immortal, the mortal world has little to offer them. Except, perhaps, perspective. Descent from the Mountain is a short story set in the A Thousand Li universe. This story can be read as a stand-alone. There are no spoilers for later works and the short story does not include individuals from the main series.

“When living in peace, one must think of danger.” These were the words Protector Chan’s Master had left him. Now, the greedy eye of a king has landed on their sect once more. In the search to reach the Divine Peak, all too many will fall by the wayside, ground under the bitter dust of desire. Between craving and enlightenment, between the heavens and earth, lies a single man. Making a choice, over what, in the end; is most important in the search for immortality.

Expectation conceals the truth. Noblewoman and cultivator Li Yao is called to a small village to investigate a mysterious illness that has drained residents of their chi. Accompanying her are her suitors Xiang An and Shen Wei, both more trouble than they're worth in Li Yao's eyes. Perhaps not all is as it seems. In the village and her suitors. This is a short story set in the A Thousand Li universe. Does not need to be read to follow the main series.

A martial artist falls from a cliff to his death. A rival stands, triumphant above. The beginning of an all too familiar story. Yet, in the time of recuperation and return, time passes and sometimes, the transformation that occurs is not the one you expect. This is a 4,500 word short story set in the A Thousand Li universe featuring as yet to be seen characters in the universe. Does not need to be read to follow the main series.

The march to the throne is littered with the bodies of the great and small in equal measure Born an Imperial Prince, Qu Yuan always knew his options were to strive for the throne or escape. When he’s forced to put his escape plan into action too early, he’s forced out of the imperial palace into the countryside where the war for the throne rages. Walking blood-soaked fields and burnt out villages, Qu Yuan will be forced to ask a simple question. Is his search for immortality more important than the lives of his kingdom?

A blade cuts both ways Newly minted an Elder of the Verdant Green Waters sect, sword prodigy Elder Cheng Zhao Wan - the Sundering Blade - is forced to leave the sect to fulfil an old obligation. A benefactor from the past is injured and has demanded Elder Cheng locate his assailant. Forced to listen to the ramblings of a dying old man, amidst a small and unfamiliar sect, who Elder Cheng can trust is unknown. Was the injury nothing more than happenstance, or is something more dire afoot? For once, Elder Cheng finds that his skill with the sword might be the least of his gifts. A Thousand Li: the Sundering Blade is a world of A Thousand Li novel, featuring a much younger Master Cheng before he meets Wu Ying. A xianxia fantasy novel, The Sundering Blade is a standalone prequel to the bestselling A Thousand Li series and features high flying martial arts, tense battle scenes and contemplations of the Dao and karma alike.

Huang Xiangjian, a mid-seventeenth-century member of the Suzhou local elite, journeyed on foot to southwest China and recorded its sublime scenery in site-specific paintings. Elizabeth Kindall’s innovative analysis of the visual experiences and social functions Huang conveyed through his oeuvre reveals an unrecognized tradition of site paintings, here labeled geo-narratives, that recount specific journeys and create meaning in the paintings. Kindall shows how Huang created these geo-narratives by drawing upon the Suzhou place-painting tradition, as well as the encoded experiences of southwestern sites discussed in historical gazetteers and personal travel records, and the geography of the sites themselves. Ultimately these works were intended to create personas and fulfill specific social purposes among the educated class during the Ming-Qing transition. Some of Huang’s paintings of the southwest, together with his travel records, became part of a campaign to attain the socially generated title of Filial Son, whereas others served private functions. This definitive study elucidates the context for Huang Xiangjian’s painting and identifies geo-narrative as a distinct landscape-painting tradition lauded for its naturalistic immediacy, experiential topography, and dramatic narratives of moral persuasion, class identification, and biographical commemoration.

China was the most advanced country in the world when Huizong ascended the throne in 1100 CE. In his eventful twenty-six year reign, the artistically-gifted emperor guided the Song Dynasty toward cultural greatness. Yet Huizong would be known to posterity as a political failure who lost the throne to Jurchen invaders and died their prisoner. The first comprehensive English-language biography of this important monarch, Emperor Huizong is a nuanced portrait that corrects the prevailing view of Huizong as decadent and negligent. Patricia Ebrey recasts him as a ruler genuinely ambitious—if too much so—in pursuing glory for his flourishing realm. After a rocky start trying to overcome political animosities at court, Huizong turned his attention to the good he could do. He greatly expanded the court’s charitable ventures, founding schools, hospitals, orphanages, and paupers’ cemeteries. An accomplished artist, he surrounded himself with outstanding poets, painters, and musicians and built palaces, temples, and gardens of unsurpassed splendor. What is often overlooked, Ebrey points out, is the importance of religious Daoism in Huizong’s understanding of his role. He treated Daoist spiritual masters with great deference, wrote scriptural commentaries, and urged his subjects to adopt his beliefs and practices. This devotion to the Daoist vision of sacred kingship eventually alienated the Confucian mainstream and compromised his ability to govern. Readers will welcome this lively biography, which adds new dimensions to our understanding of a passionate and paradoxical ruler who, so many centuries later, continues to inspire both admiration and disapproval.

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