In the first year of the Duanping era, Lin'an is rife with hidden currents. A strange fire at the Ministry of Rites examination compound destroys the roster for the Northern Expedition, and with it, the ordinary life of Shen Mo, a copyist. The charred corpse clutches pine resin from the Bureau of Military Affairs and conceals exotic porcelain, while its throat bones are stained with a thousand-year-old mercury poison. This frame-up exposes the enormous fraud behind the “Flame Virtue Star Lord's” blood sacrifice at the porcelain kilns.
To clear his name, Shen Mo's burn scar becomes a “holy envoy” brand, and he infiltrates the evil Fire God Society, which is burning records and eliminating traces. As the clock ticks toward the third quarter of the Xu hour, a mute old man from the imperial kilns gives his life to reveal The Kiln Transformation Manual: throwing living people into kilns creates “Crimson Jade,” military supplies and gunpowder are hidden inside the glazed pottery, and beneath the tortoise-shell kiln at Ge Ridge lies a deadly weapon that shrieks when exposed to fire!
The Imperial Medical Bureau's female physician Zhao Qing'e bears a fire-shaped scar on her neck, and her silver needles pierce the court's dark secrets. Amid the blaze of an explosion at the Bureau of Military Affairs, Jia Sidao's sneering laughter rings across West Lake: “What good is burning the records? The whole court is in on it with me!”
As the nitrate fuse inside the porcelain burns down to its last thread, the million residents of Lin'an's twelve wards are nothing more than another bundle of kindling in the furnace of power…
