Revenge after rebirth + subtle Chinese horror + paper effigies and spirit-mediumship + solving cases at a mysterious night shop + powerful allies and political scheming + punishing scum
Her fiancé publicly pressures her to break off their engagement so he can marry the pregnant woman living under his roof. What should she do?
Lin Zhaowan’s answer: make a paper effigy and summon her ancestors back.
At the spring banquet in her previous life, she endured the humiliation of having her engagement broken off.
Three months later, the Lin family was falsely accused of colluding with the enemy, and the entire household was imprisoned. She was thrown into a dungeon, bled as a sacrifice, and offered up to the Imperial Preceptor to prolong his life.
Reborn, she tears up the letter breaking off the engagement and uses her own blood to invite her ancestors’ spirits into paper. Right there in court, she exposes the Lu family’s smuggling of salt, murder to silence witnesses, and treason.
From then on, a little shop that opens only at night appears in the capital: the Yellow Springs Shop.
The living have grievances? Go to Shuntian Prefecture.
The dead have wishes? Enter the Yellow Springs Gate.
Paper effigies can show the way, but evidence of guilt must still be presented in court.
She clears the name of a scholar whose examination honors were stolen, and seeks justice for the battle spirits whose names were erased after they were made into lamp wicks.
The talent drained from the examination halls, the fortune stolen from the Marquis’s residence, and the soldiers’ spirits refined on the battlefield all point to a single Eternal Lamp of National Destiny, kept burning by consuming the people’s lives.
The Ninth Prince Pei Ji, long confined to the cold palace and drained of his life force day after day by a Yin vein, is both a half-Yin prince restrained by a Yin lock and a living lamp offered up as a sacrifice.
She uses paper arts to bear the Yin energy, while he uses dragon aura to suppress evil.
When the backlash of his cold poison strikes, a life-and-death bond is sealed between them. From then on, they share both life and suffering: his dragon aura sustains her life, and her paper arts suppress his Yin energy.
In this life, Lin Zhaowan wants more than to break off an engagement. She wants more than revenge.
She will uncover the truth behind her family’s massacre and extinguish the Eternal Lamp of National Destiny, fueled by stolen talent, the breath of unborn children, and the spirits of fallen soldiers. Everyone who has prolonged their life by consuming the people’s lives will pay with their own.
