In the Great Yin Dynasty, the palace is a maze of intrigue and the court is rife with undercurrents. Shen Yanqing, a brilliant detective with exceptional skills, arrives in the capital with an upright spirit. He hopes to live a quiet life, but one murder case after another finds its way to him.
A bloodstain on an embroidered bed leads to a jade dragon token; shadowy figures in secret passageways conceal a struggle over the succession; a stolen Buddha relic implicates the Imperial Seal; embroidered marks on palace walls connect to a spy network in the imperial harem... He solves one case after another, each linked to the next. Behind every murder lies a poisonous political scheme, and every trail leads to secrets from the previous dynasty.
From the depths of a marquis’s mansion to the imperial palace, from frontier strongholds to martial sects, Shen Yanqing follows the tiniest clues and unravels each mystery thread by thread. He searches for the truth in hidden marks on corpses, scraps of secret letters, and coded prophecies. But the deeper he investigates, the closer he comes to the heart of a conspiracy over the throne: the mystery surrounding the late emperor’s death, the secrets of the princes’ birth, the Grand Empress Dowager’s ambition, and the deposed crown prince’s plan to reclaim the throne. The layers of intrigue converge, drawing him into the eye of the storm.
Palace intrigue and household feuds intertwine, while political schemes and murder cases become entangled. Shen Yanqing must match wits with powerful officials, navigate the imperial consorts, and guard against deadly attacks from assassins in the shadows. With a detective’s eye, he sees through human deceit; with the blade of justice, he cuts through the darkness. As one case leads to another in a chain of interlocking mysteries, he gradually uncovers the dynasty’s century-old secrets. And when the dust finally settles, he protects the peace of the realm and ushers in a golden age.
