Night Tales of Lingmeng Mountain: Vol. 1

A monograph on local folk tales and ballads of Chenyu Vale, recording many absurd popular legends.

Volume I

It is said that deep in the mountains of Chenyu Vale, where water-shield and jade lotus grow thick, at dawn or dusk when rain-mist hangs soft, figures from old days sometimes faintly appear.

Village elders say the mountain folk of Lingmeng Mountain once worshiped many gods and ghosts, and walked with the eldest spirits among wild birds and beasts—but after that heaven-overturning melee a thousand years ago, many gods, ghosts, and spirits vanished together with the people of that time. Even so, the sentimental mountains kept echoes of memory in the leylines, which by chance reappear on some rain-veiled morning or at nightfall.

Sometimes herb-gatherers and jade craftsmen who go deep into the ranges lose their way in thick fog and meet these lonely wraiths. Elders of the village say meeting the ancient dead often foreshadows ill luck—an omen of baseless calamity. Because the leylines, swollen into knots, bring the regrets and grudges of old people into the present world, the hazy fog and unending mountain rain appear. So local mountain folk deliberately avoid rain and mist, lest sorrow of former days cling to their hearts.

Even so, after Rex Lapis finished the great work of settling mountain and sea under one rule, surveyors from Liyue Harbor still rashly plunged into the mist and rain and disturbed the old dreams of the past… But those are other stories.