In Fengdu's ghost realm, beneath the Nine Hells, stands an Archive Office unknown to all.
It does not hear the grievances of the dead or imprison evil spirits. It collects only objects bearing obsessions that cannot be reincarnated: a paper lantern that will never burn out, a bronze mirror that reveals past lives and future ones, an oil-paper umbrella dripping black rain...
Shen Duwei, the newly appointed head of the Archive Office, was once the youngest third-rank censor in the human world. But an imperial decree exiled him to this underworld bureau, where no living person ever sets foot. When he took charge, only three colleagues remained: a judge who was always sewing up his own tongue, a maidservant of Lady Meng who dared not look in a mirror, and a cat demon who had lived for eight hundred years and knew only how to brew tea.
His very first assignment was a difficult one. The newly crowned top scholar of the imperial examinations had gone mad overnight, insisting that a "paper bride" had come to marry him. Following the clues, Shen Duwei discovered that behind the tragedy, which recurred every thirty years, lay a secret spanning three dynasties and involving a celestial decree from the Heavenly Court.
What he did not know was that the blue-robed female ghost Lu Jin, who was always hiding in the deepest part of the Archive Office reading old records, was its greatest secret. She held a vermilion brush capable of rewriting the karmic ties of the dead, and she had been waiting for someone for a full eight hundred years.
"This brush can only be held by someone who does so willingly. When it touches the page, the road to the Yellow Springs will be severed, and both life and death will be overturned."
