The late emperor dies suddenly, and a new emperor takes the throne. Beneath the surface, the capital is rife with intrigue.
Shen Yan, former commander of the Imperial Guard, retired after an old case drove him from service. But the Grand General Su Jingyan visits him three times and persuades him to join her household, where he takes charge of forming the “Mystery-Breaking Office.” His four subordinates are all unusual former imperial guards:
Qin Feng, a former scout skilled at tracking, can follow half a footprint for three miles;
Wen Jingran, a scholar-officer versed in criminal law and autopsies, dissects the human heart and its darkest secrets like a surgeon with a scalpel;
Old Zhou, a veteran from the engineers' corps who knows mechanisms and hidden weapons, can open a locked room as easily as reaching into his pocket;
Liu Qingmei, a liaison who moves among every level of society, can trade a single sentence for all the capital's secrets.
They are meant to look into a few trivial matters for the general's household, but a “seamstress's hanging death” reveals the sinister practice of altering corpses' faces. Following the clues leads them into a string of interlocking mysteries: a counterfeiting case, missing officials, and stolen weapons.
Every small case conceals scattered clues, and pieced together, they point to a shocking conspiracy behind the late emperor's death. The old case remains unresolved as new ones arise. The court's factions turn on one another, while sinister forces from the martial world plot in secret. The five members of the Mystery-Breaking Office must race against time to catch the culprit while guarding against blades in the dark.
The old wound at Shen Yan's waist aches faintly. The case that drove him from service turns out to be closely connected to the mysteries unfolding before him. Secrets lurk within the general's household, and a shadow looms behind the new emperor. Can these retired imperial guards, broken in body but burning with conviction, unravel the mystery and defend their homeland?
