You Were Asked to Be a Constable, So Why Are You Leading the Imperial Grandson on a Rampage?

Let me start with the conclusion: I, Zhao Changsheng, am dead.

I died ten years before this story began, in the great fire of the Gengzi year.

My golden finger was a ten-year-long, all-encompassing dream I never wanted to wake from.

In that dream, I made up for every regret.

*

Scene One: Lin'an County.

I thought I'd found a child. He had Yin-Yang Eyes and could see ghosts.

I took him with me to solve cases and kill people, evade pursuers, and even thought about buying him candied hawthorns.

Then he told me, “That headless auntie... she's been clinging to your back this whole time.”

Only then did I understand: the ghost was the death I had carried on my back for ten years.

*

Scene Two: The Road to the Capital.

I thought I'd made a friend rich enough to rival a nation. He spent lavishly on me and cut off the autumn grain shipments of nine prefectures.

We fought side by side, maneuvering across the land.

But that was nothing more than my complete fantasy of what it meant to be “unruffled” and “wealthy.”

The truth was, the Pacification Office was so poor it couldn't even afford to replace a single good blade!

*

Scene Three: Changxin Palace.

I thought the child I protected was the most innocent and vulnerable person in the world.

I carved my way through the imperial city for him, turning my blade on the emperor.

But then he sat in a pool of blood and spoke in the emperor's voice: “You've been dead... for ten years.”

It turned out that the person I had fought to protect in my dream was the very mastermind who had ordered me pinned beneath the ruins in reality.

“The person I wanted to save... in the end... became the very thing I never wanted him to become...”

This rain has been falling for ten years. It has never stopped.