Zhu Erjue, Yangzhou’s master painter, hid in a cellar on the day the city fell. With his ears as his eyes and blood as his ink, he captured the horrors of the massacre in seven scrolls over seven days. On the eighth day, Qing troops tracked him down, and he learned that the slaughter concealed another secret: a hundred thousand lives had been drenched in blood in Yangzhou for the sake of an object lost by the previous dynasty. Carrying the Ink Plum Painting, which his master had protected with his life, Zhu Erjue enters Plum Blossom Academy, now a realm of ghosts. Amid blood-red riddles daubed in cinnabar, he uncovers a truth more cruel than death. With his brush as a blade and his paintings as testimony, he will leave silent Yangzhou one final account of what happened.
