Painted Skin Schemes: The Vermilion and Green Beetle Chronicles

A new story is out! You’re welcome to read my work on Tomato Novel. I hope you enjoy it. Your support motivates me to write, and I’ll do my best to tell every story well! Liu Qingmo, daughter of a court painter from the previous dynasty, loses her family when the new emperor purges the old officials. Using her mastery of disguise, she becomes a “face painter” in the martial world, restoring the faces of the dead to make a living. Seven years later, she is drawn into a bizarre case at a general’s mansion: the face of the general’s wife, who died suddenly, is exactly the same as that of the general’s deceased first love. The wife was also poisoned with “Qingfu Lure,” a secret toxin known only to the imperial family. While restoring her face, Liu Qingmo discovers that the hidden patterns on the coffin match those on the waist tokens of the imperial guards who wiped out her family. Fluorescent powder caught beneath the dead woman’s fingernails points directly to the truth behind the massacre.

General Shen Yanbing forcibly imprisons her as a substitute, unaware that she has seven leather masks left by her father hidden in her sleeve, or that the faint blue birthmark behind her ear marks her royal bloodline from the previous dynasty. As disguise and political intrigue intertwine, Liu Qingmo pieces together the flashes of blades from the night of her family’s destruction, the secret of Consort Shu’s blue spots, and the bloody underground palace where the new emperor raises an insect king, all through the faces of the dead. Beneath the painted faces lies either a puppet show starring a substitute, or the endgame of a player turning the tables. Watch as the face painter wields her brush like a blade, exposing the twin strangleholds of power and bloodline amid the labyrinth of cinnabar and Qingfu.