On the day the Shen family cleared out their old warehouse, Xie Yunxiu found half a bloodstained scrap of paper buried in a pile of waste.
When held up to a lamp, the scrap revealed words: it was a page from a ledger recording the dead.
Names, times, causes of death, and destinations, all recorded with chilling precision.
And this page was numbered seven.
That same night, an old servant swallowed the paper and killed himself, a broker’s office went up in flames, and every witness to the ledger was soon struck by disaster.
Following the words “Cangwu,” she uncovered a chain of clues: a porters’ guild, a ghost warehouse, bodies sunk in the Yellow River, heavenly thunderbolts, and a dragon-shadow map. She also unearthed a long-buried case from years ago
Some people had died, their bones swept into the river;
Others were still alive, but their names had long since been entered in the ledger.
And on the next page of that ledger of the dead, she found her own name.
