Solving Strange Cases in the Southern Song Dynasty

Lin'an, during the Shaoxing era of the Southern Song.

A bizarre fire consumes the entire household of Zhou Xianzong, an official in the Revenue Department, killing all twenty-seven members. The case is on the verge of being closed.

Yue Lin, a vice minister of the Court of Judicial Review, examines the scene and unearths a twenty-eighth, unidentified skeleton deep beneath the rubble. A unique imperial gold-threaded glass bead is tied around its wrist, and the victim died long before the fire.

As he investigates, Yue Lin receives a death threat: “If you want to live, stop looking into the gold-threaded glass bead.”

Yue Lin tears up the warning and presses on, only to discover with horror that the case is entangled with an old local grain-storage embezzlement scandal from fifteen years ago. Deep in the files, he finds the name of his father, Yue Lei, who supposedly died of illness many years ago.

Ciyun Ridge, a mysterious seal, secret accounts at the Revenue Department, a string of silencing attempts and assassinations... Like poisonous vines, the clues knot together a web of money and power, imperial secrets, and old bloodshed.

On one side lies an abyss of danger at every turn; on the other, the silent gaze of a father whose name has yet to be cleared.

Standing at the edge of the abyss with a bloodstained glass bead in hand, Yue Lin must decide: will he burn himself alive in pursuit of the truth, or turn away forever from this glittering, deadly city of Lin'an?