Stars Over Southern Xinjiang

[Scheming, deceitful top × silent, loyal bottom]

[Two male leads · Historical mystery · A formidable team · A game of fate]

In the seventeenth year of Yong'an under the Great Liang, a fire consumed the Imperial Astronomy Bureau. Its director, Shen Yan, perished in the flames, and the Complete Starfield Scroll, rumored to be capable of changing the fate of the nation, went missing. Seven days later, Shen Yan was seen at a riverside ferry in Jiangnan, accompanied by a boy who flipped over a chessboard and called him a "hopeless chess player." That night, the two disappeared aboard a boat headed toward the southern frontier.

Deep in the miasma-ridden lands, the herb gatherer Zhao Wangchuan was rescued from the foot of a sheer cliff. The boy called himself Gu Changsheng, a quack selling fake medicine who had been chased and pushed over the edge. But Zhao Wangchuan recognized the birthmark on the back of his neck at a glance. Ten years earlier, he had led seventy-three people into the miasma in search of that scroll. He was the only one who returned alive.

A herb gatherer who has spent ten years pursuing a debt, and a smooth-talking con artist from the martial world. Each has their own agenda, yet they keep each other in check as they venture deep into the heart of the miasma to find the silk scroll at the bottom of the Nine-Eyed Spring. Hot on their heels are imperial assassins, shamans from the southern frontier, and a deadly trap laid thirty years ago.

But Zhao Wangchuan doesn't know that the very first thing Gu Changsheng told him was a lie. "Gu Changsheng" is a false name. He's known where the scroll is from the very beginning.

"Shen Yan spent his life calculating the secrets of heaven, and overlooked only one thing. He could never have predicted that he would fall in love."

Two fugitives. One forbidden scroll. The fate of the Great Liang hangs by a thread, and that thread is clutched in the hand of a smiling con artist.