The Great Yong dynasty sustained nine Steles of Fortune with the lifespans of nameless commoners, buying peace for the land. Shen Yangu, a failed candidate in the imperial exams, exposed a scheme to sacrifice lifespans during the metropolitan examination, only to discover that his younger sister's name had also been added to the register. He took up a Lamp of Illuminating Karma, which burned away his own memories, and joined a group of capable people, each carrying old debts, to investigate the erased names of forty thousand disaster victims. But each stele they dismantled brought floods, epidemics, and war one step closer to the people. This time, he had to prove that the realm could be saved without using innocents to complete the array.
