An ambush at the royal hunting grounds sends two princes plunging off a cliff at once. A young woodcutter carries a fox to administer an antidote, then reveals a startling secret with a single sentence.
That night, the boy is summoned to the Eastern Palace. The Crown Prince asks him, "What is the most useless piece on a chessboard?"
The boy replies, "A living piece."
The Crown Prince smiles. "Then serve this prince as a dead piece."
From then on, the boy, a bird-tamer dressed in coarse gray cloth, is sent to the residence of the Sixth Prince, where he moves between the cracks in the factions' power struggles. The secret network along the northern tribute route, the mysteries of the late emperor's handwritten edict, the Second Prince's deadly scheme after three years guarding the frontier, the emperor's designs, hidden for sixteen years: every player believes this dead piece poses no threat, until he makes the final move for them all.
The living pieces are watched by a thousand eyes, but the dead piece has ten thousand paths to choose from.
The Third Prince falls silent. The Sixth Prince lays his cards on the table. The Crown Prince has waited sixteen years for him to arrive.
The lost fish-shaped tally from the snow fox's neck, the iron box sealed at the source of the Qi River, the bells ringing on the winter solstice night in Shengjing's imperial palace.
How can someone treated as a mere chess piece from beginning to end turn the entire game upside down?
"I am a commoner, a dead piece. A dead piece isn't afraid of a hard path."
He thought he was the most useless piece in the game, never knowing that on the board, the ones who make it to the end are always the pieces everyone believes are already dead.
In a nutshell
A boy sent into a game as a dead piece uses paths invisible to every player to finish the entire game.
Power struggles · Strategy · Youth · Reversal · Court politics · Secret networks
