In the fourteenth year of Yongle, Jinyiwei commander Ji Gang was executed. Before his death, he said one thing to a low-ranking officer:
“I only saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
Shen Zhiheng is demoted to the office compiling the Great Yongle Encyclopedia and ordered to investigate strange occurrences across the land.
The first case: a demon cat from the Hongwu era, with arrows hanging in midair, eyes blazing red, and a black cat said to be three thousand years old.
The second case: ghost soldiers marching through the Jianwen era, their roar like thunder, every witness dead, and a phantom army atop the city walls.
The third case: Shen Wansan’s cornucopia, able to duplicate anything, its origins unknown, and a secret from beyond the heavens concealed within.
The deeper Shen Zhiheng investigates, the more he realizes that every strange case in the Great Yongle Encyclopedia points to the same answer:
This world is not what we think it is.
And his father, missing for many years, has hidden the truth in his very name.
