# Fictional late Tang setting, # historical research, # hard-edged Chinese mystery, # imaginative fate, # interconnected puzzles
The secret late Tang organization known as the Guizang Bureau fashioned slips from the arm bones of a hundred death-row prisoners, palace attendants, and court historians, carved them with secret script, then scattered the seven pieces across the land.
Purpose: They can alter official prophecies and records, forge a dynasty’s Mandate of Heaven, and conceal the imperial family’s crimes. Gathering all seven unlocks the hidden history of the Tang dynasty, but also triggers a backlash after a thousand years: anyone who seeks the truth will suffer a calamity known as the “Heavenly Fate Curse.”
1. The Guizang Bureau (late Tang): A secret agency established privately by Emperor Xuanzong, omitted from official histories. It specialized in altering historical records, fabricating natural disasters and omens, and eliminating those in the know. Its members guarded the secret of the bone slips for generations.
2. Keepers of the Slips (a thousand-year legacy): Descendants of the Guizang Bureau, living among ordinary people and guarding and concealing the bone slips from generation to generation, abiding by their ancestral motto: “Unseal not Heaven’s secrets; reveal not Heaven’s hidden treasures.”
3. Seekers of the Slips (antagonists): Ambitious individuals from every age who seek to gather the bone slips, recreate the late Tang art of altering fate, and control the destiny of the times.
