The Bone of Fate

In the Great Yan Dynasty, deep in Know Fate Lane in the southern part of the capital, stood a dilapidated Pavilion of Heavenly Secrets. Its master, Li Changgeng, was a mysterious young fortune-telling master. He did not read birth charts or cast the Zhouyi hexagrams. Instead, he relied on a lost art: the Bone of Fate and Physiognomy. By feeling a person’s bones, he could discern the ups and downs of their life. By studying their features, he could judge the causes and consequences of their past three lives. On a stormy night, a disembodied skeletal hand knocked at the pavilion’s door. It had come from the residence of the Chancellor, whose power reached across the court. It brought with it a bloody case buried deep in the past, and a woman’s determination to clear her name, frozen beneath layers of injustice. To fulfill his promise and carve out a place for himself in the capital’s treacherous currents, Li Changgeng began with the skeletal hand knocking at his door. He laid his plans with care, using the mighty General’s grief over his lost son to gain entry to the Chancellor’s residence. Making himself the bait, he maneuvered among the scheming brothers of the Chancellor’s household, gradually exposing the crimes and conspiracies the powerful had built upon piles of bones beneath the prosperous age. In court, political rivals clashed and undercurrents surged. In the martial world, strange arts abounded and murderous threats lurked everywhere. With hands that could see through life and death and touch the truth of injustice, Li Changgeng fought in a game played on the board of the whole realm, seeking justice for the living and speaking for the dead. His task was not merely to piece together one broken Bone of Fate and Physiognomy after another. He also had to tear a breach in the seemingly unshakable iron curtain of power, opening a way for justice and the natural order. As the truth was peeled back layer by layer, he discovered that every wronged skeleton ultimately pointed to the Son of Heaven enthroned above them all.