Gu Mang has emerged from the Time Mirror a changed man. With his shattered memories recovered, he sets out to distance himself once more from his erstwhile lover, Mo Xi. In turn, Mo Xi finds himself powerless against a Gu Mang who is both so familiar and yet so cruel. Regardless, if the two hope to complete their mission and return to Chonghua, they must work hand in hand to escape the demon-infested island. Meanwhile, Mo Xi's own experience in the Time Mirror has left him more certain than ever that some secrets still linger behind Gu Mang's treasonous defection eight years ago. He's determined to dig up the truth at any cost--even the cost of his own life.

Gu Mang is determined to turn over a new leaf and prove to Mo Xi that he's not the ruthless man he once was. Yet as his old memories return, the shadow of the traitorous General Gu seems to haunt him, raising questions to which he has no answers--both about his defection from Chonghua and his past entanglements with Mo Xi. As Mo Xi and Gu Mang struggle toward a fragile truce, the pair are summoned for an emergency rescue mission to an island inhabited by demons. But this island is full of buried secrets...including one that may unravel everything Mo Xi and Gu Mang thought they knew about the past.

Now that Mo Xi has uncovered the truth after eight long years, he and Gu Mang finally have a chance to clear away the lies of the past. Both know the moments they share are destined to be fleeting. Despite his efforts to remain lucid, Gu Mang's memories from the Time Mirror continue to slip away, and dark magic eats at his mind. Yet peace at home is short-lived as new threats gather at the frontier. When the Liao Kingdom attacks once again, Gu Mang will join his former master, Murong Lian, as well as Mo Xi to confront their nation's darkest enemy. Their mission: to neutralize an ancient danger inextricably tied to Chonghua's most secret history.

As the case of the murders in the capital comes to a close, Mo Xi takes custody of Gu Mang, the traitor who was once his lover. With his betrayer now firmly in his grasp, Mo Xi believes he can manipulate Gu Mang into revealing the hidden secrets within his broken mind. Yet one question continues to haunt Mo Xi: Is Gu Mang pretending, or has he truly forgotten everything? Tortured by specters of the past and bound by demands of the present, Mo Xi begins to lose hope of ever gaining the satisfaction he craves. But when Gu Mang's memories finally do surface, what--or who--will he remember?

Noble-born Mo Xi is the foremost general of Chonghua, known for his ruthless temper and ascetic air. Once he was one of two promising young commanders, twin stars of the empire. His comrade, the lowborn Gu Mang, was Mo Xi's brother-in-arms, best friend, and--secretly--his lover, until the day Gu Mang turned traitor and joined the ranks of their nation's greatest enemy. Now Gu Mang has been returned to the empire a ruined man, a shadow of the military genius he once was. The public clamors for his death, and no one yearns for vengeance more than Mo Xi. Or so he thought--for faced once more with his bitterest enemy, Mo Xi is left with more questions than answers. Why did the man he loved betray him? And what secrets hide behind Gu Mang's tortured eyes?

After a brush with a renegade deity, Lan Wangji invites Wei Wuxian back to the Lan Clan of Gusu. But Lan Wangji seems different from the young man Wei Wuxian used to know. This Lan Wangji keeps a secret stash of alcohol, puts up with all manner of shenanigans, and even lets Wei Wuxian lie on top of him for an entire night! What happened to the Lan Zhan who fought with Wei Wuxian over a jug of wine and berated him for slacking off? Travel back to when Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were mere youths, to the pair's very first encounter!

The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL’s male–male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects. Queer Transfigurations is the first detailed examination of the BL media explosion across Asia. The book brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia—and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms. Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. In short, Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.