Mu Yunwan was born with two different-colored eyes and the ability to see the forces of yin and yang, but the world called her a “witch.” At eighteen, she was thrown into a pond to drown because of an ominous sign. After faking her death, she took on a new identity and infiltrated the capital to uncover the truth behind her adoptive father’s mysterious death.
“He commands the Criminal Court. Prayer beads coil around his wrist, yet he’s most skilled at cutting throats with a zither string.”
Xiao Jingheng, the seventh prince of the current dynasty, appears gentle and refined, but is in truth a mad minister who controls the black market. A chronic heart condition means he won’t live past twenty-five, until he meets the “little liar” who can cure him.
A bloody case at the Imperial Medical Academy forces them to join forces.
Paper figures borrowing lives, flowers blooming from bones, the living becoming Buddhas... Behind every bizarre case lies a secret of the Twelve Arts of the Strange Scripture. And little by little, she discovers:
Her memories have been altered, and she should really be twenty-two;
Xiao Jingheng is the son of the enemy who wiped out her family, yet he is also the only medicine that can cure her deadly poison;
The so-called identity of “the last surviving heir of the previous dynasty” is actually a deception in a century-old game of chess...
“You want the empire? I’ll take it for you. You want me dead? I’ll hand you the sword.”
As they face each other with swords drawn at the altar of the celestial paths, she asks with a smile, “Xiao Jingheng, if I’m the disaster written in your fate, will you kill me?”
He crushes his prayer beads and touches her cheek with his bloodstained hand. “Then we’ll descend into hell together.”
