The Wooden Man Manual

In Dadu, Yuan China, people of many ethnicities live side by side, and the laws are still taking shape. Ayimu Tulan, a Uyghur puppeteer, carries the family’s secret craft of mechanical engineering, The Wooden Puppet Manual. With it, she can make puppets reproduce the movements of living joints. A perplexing case of treason brings her to the attention of Zhang Chengbi, the Censor-in-Chief. As a fog of political intrigue obscures the truth, Ayimu uses her extraordinary skills as a “puppet forensic examiner,” concealing a clepsydra sundial inside a puppet’s body. In silence, she sets time in motion, disproves crucial testimony, and shakes the imperial court. Her craft is not a one-person act of transformation, but a dance of leverage performed through many people’s combined efforts. Every step obeys the unyielding laws of physics, and that is precisely what makes it so reliable. From the stage to the courtroom, from flying wood shavings to the ink scent of legal statutes, Ayimu and Zhang Chengbi, alongside skilled artisans and officials of many ethnicities, face doubts and clashes together. With cold machinery and a burning desire to uncover the truth, they help drive the revision of the Great Yuan Code, inscribing “mechanical evidence gathering” into the empire’s legal canon and forging a tale of judicial progress shaped by the wisdom of many peoples. Technology is justice; craftsmanship dispels mysteries.