In the tenth year of Xianchun, a corpse floated outside Ganzhou City.
The ring on the dead man’s hand bore the secret insignia of a Quanzhou merchant house.
Song Rilong, the assistant prefect, was ordered to investigate. The prefect was pressing him for answers, and the case files were riddled with doubts.
Xinyi, a woman who sold herbal remedies on the street, made a living selling herbs with her younger brother, Sheng. Sheng sat outside the jail counting ants, and a runner took a liking to him. Every day, Sheng brought food into the jail and carried a few words back out. He had no idea those words would cost his sister her life.
One corpse reopened a case buried twenty years ago.
One ring brought a banished avenger to light.
Song Rilong wrote a poem atop Yugu Terrace: “This year, I’ve tried my hand at governing a declining town, like a monk dwelling in a ruined hut.” He thought he was investigating someone else, unaware that every stroke was being written into his own book of fate.
The children in the street still sang that folk song: “The Gan River flows, its waters split in two; all the way to Lin’an, they never turn back…” They didn’t know the song would soon be forbidden.
Sheng was still counting ants.
When the truth finally surfaced, Song Rilong realized
Someone had investigated his case twenty years ago and left behind a single line:
“Some cases, when you investigate them to the end, turn out to be about you.”
But the tide of history was already surging in. The Yuan army was marching south, and Yashan was near.
Sheng climbed Yugu Terrace, carrying something with him.
A flower bloomed in a crack in the stone.
The ants kept crawling.
So slowly.
But they crawled across the entire Southern Song.
Just like Sheng.
