In the city of Yongan a fiction writer and amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures with their greenish stomachs or gills or strange birthmarks live alongside humans in nearinconspicuousness some with ancient forbears others engineered as artificial breeds. Guided and often misguided by her elusive university professor and his scrappy sidekickstudent Zhong Liang our narrator finds herself on a mission to track down each species. And a