The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart

…the abbot of our monastery always said that fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.

These are three novellas set in "a China that never was," narrated by the peasant Number Ten Ox. The saga starts when Ox is sent from his village to find a cure for a mysterious illness that has paralyzed all of the children in his village. The only sage he can afford to engage is Master Li, who introduces himself as having "a slight flaw in my character." Fortunately, the only sage he can afford is the sage he needs to unravel the mystery. They set off on a series of quests to find the most potent ginseng root in the world, meeting and outwitting a series of more and more malevolent opponents. The writing is witty and steeped in a brew of Chinese mythology and history. This was an enjoyable and entertaining diversion.

In the first tale, Bridge of Birds, the children of the village, but only those of a certain age, have fallen into a deep sickness. Master Li pieces together the clues, and determines there is only one possible cure. The pair are off on quest to retrieve the Root of Power which can cure them, But one quest leads to another, and one coincidence leads to another, as they unravel a plot that grows deeper with every step. Number Ten Ox is the Watson to Master Li's Holmes, in a story that is both mystery and journey.

you have a hole in your heart. All young people do. It’s there to catch the wonderful things of the world, and later on it gets filled up by broken things.

In The Story of the Stone, Master Li is called to examine the source of a forged manuscript, and the pair stumble upon a murder, in a valley once ruled by a mass murderer named the Laughing Prince. At first, the murder appears to have been staged to make it look as if the Laughing Prince had returned from the grave. Surely this is just a tactic to throw them off the track of the real perpetrator. Isn't it?

whenever I hear a high priest howl for divine retribution, I suspect acid indigestion.

Eight Skilled Gentlemen begins with a gruesome murder by a zombie-like creature. Master Li must consult his mentor, the even older Celestial Master, to dig into lore that stretches back to the aboriginal people of the land, who were displaced by the people who formed the Chinese dynasties. The high point of this adventure is a Dante-like journey through Hell to discover who is behind the murders. There's rather a few too many lengthy digressions in this story, but it still has the witty dialog of the first two.

Final advice: there's a certain formula that's common to the three tales, and it may be worth spacing out the reading of the second and third so that this is less obvious.