Fox & demon

When King Zhou of Shang demands a provincial marquis's beautiful daughter for his harem, the proud father Su Hu writes his defiance on the palace wall and goes to war. The girl's name is Daji — and her journey to the capital at Zhaoge will decide the fate of a dynasty.

At seventy-two, Jiang Ziya is sent down from Mount Kunlun with a mandate to remake heaven and no gift for making a living. He fails at every trade his sworn brother sets him — until a fortune-telling stall makes him famous, and a demon in mourning white walks up to test the one man in Zhaoge who can see her.

On the goddess Nüwa's sacred birthday, King Zhou of Shang enters her temple, sees her lifelike image, and scrawls a lustful poem on the wall. The insulted goddess cannot strike a king whose dynasty still holds heaven's mandate — so she summons a thousand-year fox spirit and two others. This is how the Investiture of the Gods begins.

The Shang has fallen. The fox who wore a woman's face for thirty years is dragged to the executioner's block — and the soldiers cannot lift their swords, because even now, bound and condemned, she is the most beautiful thing any of them has ever seen. And on a high tower, the king she ruined waits for the fire.