The Brocade Guard Case Files

The first great mystery of the Wanli era in the Ming Dynasty: Shen Moxuan, a detective of the Secret Heavens Bureau, tells the time from incense ash and reads footprints from traces of moss!

In the autumn of 1600, a headless body was found aboard a pleasure boat on the Qinhuai River in Nanjing. “Ghost fires” appeared in the Ministry of Revenue’s archives late at night, and a Portuguese ambassador was found dead in a locked room during a court music performance... Behind one baffling case after another lay a shocking conspiracy spanning the reigns of the Jiajing and Wanli emperors.

Shen Moxuan, a former Hanlin Academy editor, joins forces with Zhao Shi, a master of capture, and Su Xiaoxiao, an informant from the Caobang, using the Spider-Silk Examination technique to read memories from minute traces and solve locked-room mysteries and track coded star charts. From the secret arts of Jiangnan craftsmen to Matteo Ricci’s Western mechanisms, from the Caobang’s secret signals to the strange records of Mount Longhu, the truth shifts with every step, like a Suzhou garden.

Scientific sleuthing × Oriental mysteries × court intrigue

Enter the [Era of Oriental Detectives] and uncover the Ming Dynasty’s greatest mystery, hidden beneath the undercurrents!