- **The Pain of Exile**: After Qin conquers Chu, Bai Yan, a Chu scholar, is exiled to Xianyang with his family. Along the way, he witnesses his mother die of illness and his younger sister vanish. Carrying a pain that cuts to the bone, he begins a new life.
- **Intrigue in the Artisans' Workshop**: At the Xianyang Workshop, Bai Yan is promoted ahead of schedule for his mastery of seal script and joins the effort to unify the written language. But he unexpectedly discovers secret anti-Qin messages from the remnants of the Six States hidden in bamboo slips.
- **The Bloodstained Prison**: His friend Meng Yi is ordered to investigate the "Missing Chu Text" case. To save his colleagues, Bai Yan secretly alters the evidence. In the imperial censorate's prison, he witnesses the brutal official Zhang Tang force a Confucian scholar to confess by pouring mercury over his head.
- **A Shocking Discovery at Mount Li**: While overseeing construction of the imperial mausoleum, Bai Yan encounters his sister Bai Zhi, now a favored concubine of an alchemist. In the tomb's trap-filled passageways, the siblings uncover crucial evidence of Xu Fu's scheme to seek immortality.
- **The Fire of Book Burning**: Ordered to burn the classics of the Six States, Bai Yan secretly keeps a Chu shamanic text. Reading it late one night, he discovers a star chart concealing Chu Nan Gong's prophecy: "Though Chu has only three households left, it will be Chu that destroys Qin."
- **The False Edict at Shaqiu**: Bai Yan serves as a document clerk on the First Emperor's eastern tour and witnesses Zhao Gao and Li Si alter the imperial edict. In the pouring rain at Shaqiu Palace, he carves the truth onto a tortoise shell and buries it in the foundations of the palace.
