On the Night My Whole Family Was Executed, I Begged for My Life with My Nose

The night the Shen family was executed, I was sold off as a “living incense burner” to test fragrances, then tossed into a mass grave to die. But a man-eating lantern made of blue gauze chose me, a dying person, instead. The lantern must devour nine lives before it will grant me one thing “impossible in this world.” When its flame goes out, I die. But I happen to have a nose that can detect seventeen kinds of incense and hear the beating of people’s hearts. The “living incense burner” no one else wanted has become my sharpest blade. A foreign merchant impervious to blades and bullets? I use a Bone-Illuminating Mirror to find the gaps in his bones, then break his stone body with a bone flute. A martial arts grandmaster with a heart like iron? One song of “Soul-Returning Prelude” has him kneeling and begging for death. My family’s killers hiding in the shadows? I follow the trail of incense and make them pay back every last thing, with interest. But why did that lantern choose only me? And is the white-robed person carrying it the same one who stood amid the flames at the Shen residence three years ago and bowed over my mother’s corpse? Open chapter one and see how I, a dying person, take up the lantern and light the night.