Lianshan, a lone wolf constable of the Six Fan Gate, bears the supernatural gift of “empathic retrospection.” By borrowing the final instant of a dead person’s life, he can glimpse the truth buried beneath the blood.
The price is that every time he touches a corpse, the dead person’s fear and pain flood into his very bones like a tide, tormenting his mind day and night.
A tongue-ripping murder in Butcher’s Alley leads to a major case from twenty years ago. Half a charred list swallowed down a corpse’s throat, a molar left in the dead man’s palm, and the curse-like words “I invite you to your death”, following every clue, Lianshan travels from the capital to the northern frontier, from western Hunan to Jiangling, stepping deeper and deeper into a game that uses the whole realm as its board and human hearts as its pieces.
The forbidden book Record of Awakening the World, a Motuo token, a ledger of canal transport crimes hidden beneath the water gate, the smiling incense of South Fragrance Hall, silver spirit-summoning bells on the snowy plains... Each case is a knife aimed in the same direction: his father, Lian Ruhui, who vanished twenty years ago. Everyone says he is dead.
Yet in those cases, Lian Ruhui’s handwriting, old belongings, and even his shadow keep emerging from the darkness.
Lianshan isn’t solving cases. He is chasing an answer that was laid out for him twenty years ago.
But at the heart of the truth lies the final meaning of “I invite you to your death.”
Some debts must be paid in blood. Some doors can only be opened with a life.
