Frostbone, Spring’s Last Ashes

The vast imperial capital can conceal a thousand splendors, but not a century of lies. Some paint the skin, others paint the bones. Shen Yanbing tears off her golden ornament not to reveal her face, but to cut out the heart that this capital has pickled through and through. Gu Changling burns the map not to destroy the realm, but to brew a bowl of medicine without poison amid the ruins. The sickness of this world has never lain in the skin, but in the marrow. And the cure for this world is not found in the Imperial Medical Office, but in that bowl of steaming-hot yangchun noodles.