“I spent my whole life interpreting words, until I came across an inscription that wanted to kill me.”
He is Shen Mo, the empire’s youngest PhD in paleography and the first person to discover the “Bronze Divine Oracle.”
A quiet scholar, his hands slightly crooked from years of holding a brush, yet his eyes hold a sharp light capable of piercing the fog surrounding words written a thousand years ago. Everyone believes he rose to become the “Deputy Minister of Fate” by deciphering a lost script. Only he knows that the words engraved on the bronze casket are not a message from heaven, but a sentence of judgment hanging over humanity.
“It foretells disasters, but it never lies. The terrifying part is that the more clearly we understand it, the sooner we die.”
When the earthquake predicted by the first inscription strikes right on time, and the fire foretold by the second breaks out before their eyes, Shen Mo realizes he has opened not a sign of good fortune, but Pandora’s box. And the cruelest rule is this: anyone who fully understands an inscription will die in the manner it predicts.
“I could burn the rubbings and let the secret remain silent forever. But if I do, the next prophecy could be ‘The dynasty will fall.’”
His brush-holding hand begins to tremble, not from fear, but beneath the weight of his choice. On one side are the Empress Dowager’s authority, the temptations of mysterious clans, and the suspicions of his comrades. On the other is the cold, calculated purge of civilization’s immune system. He realizes he is not deciphering words, but witnessing the ultimate struggle between human nature and fate.
“If the truth itself can kill, should we still seek to know it?”
Now the third inscription has been deciphered. The countdown to death points to the last companion still by his side. Standing before the bronze casket, Shen Mo finally sees the last line
