Fiction. DREAM OF THE DRAGON POOL: A DAOIST QUEST is a multifaceted novel woven around the historical fact of the death-sentence exile of China's best loved poet-adventurer, Li Bo (also Li Bai, 701-762 A.D.). This is an adventure story of magic, myth, and occult powers written as traditional Chinese-style wu-xia (heroic) fiction. Albert A. Dalia is a China scholar with four decades of study, research, and experience in medieval Chinese history and culture. Two decades ago, after earning two masters degrees and a Ph.D. in Chinese history and religion, he turned to fiction writing and produced a series of published short stories and, now, his first novel.

Dream of the Dragon Pool - A Daoist Quest is a novel-length tale woven around the historical fact of the death-sentence exile of China's greatest poet, Li Bo (701-762 A.D.). This is an adventure story of magic, myth, and occult powers written as traditional Chinese-style heroic fiction. Forced by the emperor's exile order, Li Bo travels the Yangtze river, toward certain death in distant Burma/Myanmar. Along the way, he unwittingly befriends the emperor's most powerful shamaness who is trying to escape from palace life to Mount Wu and serve the mythical Rain Goddess, legendary mistress of that sacred mountain. Li Bo accidentally awakens the dark forces of the Blood Dragon, a mythical Chinese water creature, and its ghostly followers in pursue of a magical sword, the mythical Dragon Pool Sword, that he receives in a dream from a Daoist Immortal. The cast is rounded out by Li's bodyguard/companion, a wandering blade veteran of the Tang dynasty's Central Asian conquests, known as the "Iron Talon;" a mysterious swordsman/musician, who travels with a ghost-catching drunken monkey; a "dream assassin," capable of killing people from within their dreams; and a blond, green-eyed, Central Asian female ghost, enslaved by the Blood Dragon's powers. All the characters are authentically inspired by medieval Chinese "tales of wonder" storywriters and woven together by the author, a medieval China scholar turned novelist. Among other awards, Dream of the Dragon Pool was chosen for inclusion in the Penn State University Introduction to Chinese Religions course.

Come experience mythic China in The Dragon Pool, a game of Wuxia Fantasy in the Middle Kingdom. The Dragon Pool includes: 1. An easy to use and quick resolution system 2. Action Cards for ease of play 3. Over 30 Martial Arts styles and rules for making your own 4. Much, much more!

This ambitious work offers a transnational account of the deity Shinra Myōjin, the “god of Silla” worshipped in medieval Japanese Buddhism from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Sujung Kim challenges the long-held understanding of Shinra Myōjin as a protective deity of the Tendai Jimon school, showing how its worship emerged and developed in the complex networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”—a “quality” rather than a physical space defined by Kim as the primary conduit for cross-cultural influence in a region that includes the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the East China Sea, and neighboring coastal areas. While focusing on the transcultural worship of the deity, Kim engages the different maritime arrangements in which Shinra Myōjin circulated: first, the network of Korean immigrants, Chinese merchants, and Japanese Buddhist monks in China’s Shandong peninsula and Japan’s Ōmi Province; and second, that of gods found in the East Asian Mediterranean. Both of these networks became nodal points of exchange of both goods and gods. Kim’s examination of temple chronicles, literary writings, and iconography reveals Shinra Myōjin’s evolution from a seafaring god to a multifaceted one whose roles included the god of pestilence and of poetry, the insurer of painless childbirth, and the protector of performing arts. Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” is not only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon school in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study in English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese religion. Unlike other recent studies on individual Buddhist deities, it foregrounds the need to approach them within a broader East Asian context. By shifting the paradigm from a land-centered vision to a sea-centered one, the work underlines the importance of a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of Buddhist deities.

The War God Continent was vast and endless. The nine forbidden lands were filled with a rain of blood and gore. The Four Great Sacred Grounds had forged countless peerless experts. The mysterious youth who had walked out from the forbidden area. A man. A saber. He stepped on the geniuses and the strong, becoming a supreme wargod. And all of this, from the moment Mu Tian arrived ...

A dragon’s vision. A girl’s curse. A quest to save dragons from extinction. Dragons disappeared long ago. Now they’ve returned, and magic pours back into a world that has buried its existence. Becca is ridiculed for believing dragons are more than the plague-bringers of history. When a fever sweeps through her village, igniting fears that the dragon plague has returned, her belief becomes dangerous. To make matters worse, Becca can suddenly sense emotions. It’s a curse, exposing secrets she’d rather not know and making life almost unbearable. The youngest dragon, Gregor, watched his family die because he didn’t know his power could’ve saved them. Defying the rules, he risks exposure to search for a human girl from his vision, certain she’s the key to dragon survival. But when Gregor finds Becca, violence erupts. Now the fate of the world rests on these unlikely heroes finding the courage to save dragons without losing everyone they love.