Stories in poetry

Beneath the White Jade Capital

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · A Travel Novel in an Ancient Setting · Complete · 36 chapters · 4 reads

The pardon removes Shen Yan’s wooden cangue, but gives him not a coin for the journey home. He takes on thirty-seven crates of damp books, hoping to seek out an old friend in Jiangzhou. An old military treatise still holds his youthful boasts of bringing peace to the realm, but the girl at the ferry asks only whether the wave patterns on the book spines can help her find her father. As place names gradually emerge along the way, this job taken for a living becomes harder and harder to finish along its planned route.

This is an original novel created with AI assistance, expanding on the poetic meaning of Li Bai’s 《经乱离后天恩流夜郎忆旧游书怀赠江夏韦太守良宰》 (After the Turmoil, Exiled to Yelang by Imperial Grace: Recalling Old Travels and Expressing My Feelings to Wei Liangzai, Prefect of Jiangxia) and this website’s original short story. Its characters, era, institutions, and plot use an imagined setting. It is neither a biography of the poet nor a translation or adaptation of the original poem.