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CooLWJ Library Original fiction inspired by poetry

Stories in poetry

Follow a line of poetry into a story.

A light by the ferry, an unsent letter, and moonlight on ordinary lives.
Take the time for a cup of tea and open a story of everyday life.

Browse the shelves 118 works waiting to be read

THE COLLECTION

On the shelves 118

Choose a book and let its story unfold.

Keeping the Lamp on the Maple Bank

A Tale of Marvels in an Ancient SettingComplete

Keeping the Lamp on the Maple Bank

As Uncle Qin counts the twenty-ninth incense stick, he suddenly notices the bruises on the wrist of the boy chosen for the river sacrifice. The clan head says the boy volunteered to consult the waters, and they need only wait for the auspicious hour to launch the boat; yet through all these years, Uncle Qin has never dared look again at the whirlpool beneath the maple grove. There is no one in the temple who can stop the boat, and the sun keeps sinking. He heads to the dock to find the boatwoman who has refused to ferry the temple’s pilgrims ever since her elder brother died.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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Willow Leaves After Frost

War Fiction in a Historical SettingComplete

Willow Leaves After Frost

Lu Zhao slips a willow leaf into the wedding invitation and promises A Sui a victorious return in spring. He rides to war on the horse his father mortgaged farmland to obtain, receives new wrist guards, drinks strong liquor, and asks his squad leader to write his return date larger in the letter. When winter arrives, he is ordered to deliver a reply concerning a prisoner exchange and hears a voice from his hometown in the enemy camp. The agreed three days pass, but the reply remains buried beneath papers on a desk, while the people on both banks of the frozen river can no longer afford to wait for another spring.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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A Letter from a High Tower

A Tale of Marvels in an Ancient SettingComplete

A Letter from a High Tower

Three jars of wine stand ready beneath the high tower, but Pei Jian’s gaze catches on an old note from his master. A single annotation leads back to Zhou Bo, expelled three years ago, and also entangles Pei Jian’s current position as a textual editor. Tonight was meant to be a farewell for this old friend. All he wants is to find a sheet of paper that can clear the charge of stealing poetry without disgracing their master’s school. People begin arriving upstairs, while the worm-eaten manuscript page remains in his hand.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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Crossing the Mist into the Human World

Adventure in an Imagined Ancient WorldComplete

Crossing the Mist into the Human World

After delivering other people’s family letters for twenty-eight years, Xing Shan has gone three months without word from his son. On an inn’s window frame amid the river mist, he recognizes the character “山” (mountain, also the Shan in his name), with its elongated final stroke. The innkeeper says an old guest merely carved it in passing. At night, a roomful of displaced people waits for a boat to Taoyuan: they say that once across the river, they will never need to flee again. He walks toward the ferry landing and sees a familiar length of red cord showing at a young worker’s wrist.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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Red Beans, Hidden Currents

Ancient Chinese–Style MysteryComplete

Red Beans, Hidden Currents

On the third day of her marriage, the intricately carved die on Xu Dou’s wrist falls and splits in two. A red bean rolls out, but inside is also a slip of paper bearing an unfamiliar woman’s birth date and purchase price. Her husband carves dice by day and always goes to the gambling house in the west of the city at night. When he gave her the die, he spoke of longing that reached into the bones. From her father, she learned to read wood grain and open seams. This time, her thin blade must probe somewhere she has never asked about.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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Another Tale of the Golden Hairpin

A Tale of Marvels in an Ancient SettingComplete

Another Tale of the Golden Hairpin

Rong Sheng accepts a broken gold hairpin and agrees to find Lord Pei’s late wife, said to have died for love, hoping to earn enough to treat his sister’s eyes. Yet the first things to surface in the bronze basin are a pair of worn-out shoes. The woman who appears afterward is no peerless beauty, nor does she acknowledge the old romance celebrated in song. From behind a screen, Lord Pei tells him to try again. But the woman says the hairpin is hers and asks him to find those shoes.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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Where the Water Clock Falls Silent

Ancient Chinese–Style MysteryComplete

Where the Water Clock Falls Silent

As Xie Heng counts the thirty-seventh strike, the water-clock chamber suddenly falls silent, though the water gauge keeps moving. She opens the old registers: whenever the laundry baskets leave the palace, one stretch of entries in the latter half of the night is always written in unusually dark ink. Following the trail to the western corner, she encounters a young girl who should not be hidden in a basket. Just then, the summons to the front hall she has awaited for twenty years arrives. The appointed audience falls precisely when the next load of laundry baskets is due to leave the palace.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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A Dream Crossing Among Pear Blossoms

Strange Tales in a Historical SettingComplete

A Dream Crossing Among Pear Blossoms

The pear tree in the courtyard has yet to bud, but a wet blossom appears beside Su Li’s pillow, river sand still clinging to its heart. In her dream the night before, her late husband had broken off this very spray of pear blossom for her. Since she resumed embroidering their unfinished wedding quilt, every petal she adds has brought the riverbank into sharper focus. She begins to long for nightfall, even as river water slowly seeps through the floor tiles at home, and beneath the sound of water someone else is knocking on a boat.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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The Five Lakes Are Not Yet Far

Adventure in an Imagined Ancient WorldComplete

The Five Lakes Are Not Yet Far

Tao Ye resigns as military adviser, buys a boat and a fishing rod, and even learns to knead his own bait. Less than half a li from shore, his bailing ladle strikes a bloodied hand. The waterworks worker hiding in the hold is being hunted. The soaked plan held against his chest still bears Tao Ye’s seal from years ago, but several inked lines are no longer as they were. The open lake is right before him when horns sound from the shore.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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A New Passenger on the Homeward Boat

Romance in an Imagined Ancient WorldComplete

A New Passenger on the Homeward Boat

Three autumns have seen the river fall, and Ye Wan still watches every northbound sail at the dockyard. In the evening rain, a messenger brings her husband’s final letter, yet the small mole below his brow and the blade scar behind his ear belong to the face she longs for every night. He calls himself A-Yuan, does not recognize the marriage certificate, and remembers nothing of this house. She brings out his old clothes, but his travel bag still holds medicine he must take back to a fishing family on the north bank.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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Spring Tidings on the River of Dreams

A Novel of Dreamlike Wonders in a Historical SettingComplete

Spring Tidings on the River of Dreams

A-Xiang and Lin Yue each keep watch on opposite banks of the River of Dreams. Only on the Qixi Festival can they weave a bridge from the dream threads they have gathered over the year and meet for a single night; after waking, they remember nothing of each other. As their tenth meeting approaches, a wet shoe flecked with wheat chaff lands on the unfinished bridge, bearing, impossibly, the weight of the mortal world. Across the river, the red lantern still urges her to come, yet the final three passes of the shuttle in A-Xiang’s hand remain unmade.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 38 chapters

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Autumn Wine upon the Lake

Social Life in an Ancient SettingComplete

Autumn Wine upon the Lake

Xu Nian spends six extra copper coins to gather the three fish for this year’s autumn reunion. One old friend has already been laid to rest, and another writes that his legs are failing him, yet he still polishes three sets of cups and chopsticks and invents return dates for those absent. Then Pan Liu suddenly arrives, leaning on a walking stick. As always, they complain about expensive fish and late wine, neither the first to mention the empty cup. The pavilion at the center of the lake remains, but last year’s boat may never return, however long they wait.

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · 1 chapter

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Stories and poems lead back to one another.Find inspiration in the poetry collection

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