My master said that when reading a person's features, you look at their spirit first, then their bones, and finally their skin. Looks can deceive, bones are hard to hide, and the spirit never lies.
On the day I completed my training, my master gave me a bronze mirror. Four characters were engraved on the back: "Appearance reflects the heart."
In an old alley in South City, twenty-six-year-old Chen Yan runs a shabby face-reading stall. Its sign is faded, and business is slow. He learned the "Nine Signs Method" from his master. He doesn't read faces by guesswork, but by studying bone structure, spirit, and complexion, and, above all, with a pair of eyes that can see through the human heart.
Zhou Zheng, a criminal investigator from the city bureau, comes looking for him. For the past six months, seven clients of Qian Banxian, a fortune-teller at the Zhimitang in the north of the city, have either committed suicide or disappeared after having their faces read. The victims should have lived to a ripe old age, but a single pronouncement, "You'll bring ruin to your husband and children, and won't live past twenty-five," drove them to despair.
Chen Yan has no desire to get involved with the authorities, until he sees Qian Banxian's face. That kindly face of an eighty-year-old is fake. His cheekbones have been augmented, his chin filled, his eyebrows tattooed, and even the lines on his palms painted on. A fake face-reader is using physiognomy to kill.
When false physiognomy meets a true inheritance, the struggle between "appearance" and "heart" truly begins only when the bronze mirror shatters.
