Agarwood Ashes

Beiping, 1924.

A new chief inspector arrived at the Capital Police Department. His surname was Gu, and they said he was the son of some big shot. He could have had a nice official post, but instead he insisted on investigating cases.

That same year, the young master of the Shen family, who had been kept deep within the women's quarters, was finally allowed out by his parents.

The young master was named Shen Yan'an. He was nineteen, with a face no one could look away from. But he was as frail as a breeze. They said he weighed less than a sack of rice, and his waist was so slender that one hand could encircle it. Master Shen and Madam Shen doted on him like the apple of their eye. They had raised him for over a decade without letting him experience even a trace of the outside world.

But the young master had one particular flaw: he was far too curious.

Just how curious? Curious enough to stumble upon a murder scene on his very first outing to a temple fair.

Curious enough that when he saw a corpse for the first time, he didn't cry in fright. Instead, he crouched down to study it for ages, thoroughly infuriating the inspector handling the case.

And so, a young master raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and a cold-faced inspector newly transferred from Tianjin became entangled by a twist of fate.

One case followed another in Beiping, and the bodies kept piling up. Some died backstage at an opera house, some in the middle of a ballroom at a mansion, and some in neglected corners deep in the alleys. Among the dead were officials and nobles, peddlers and laborers, people guilty of the worst crimes, and good people with nowhere left to turn.

Shen Yan'an said, "This world devours people, no matter their rank or station."

Gu Tingchen said, "Then we'll investigate every case, one by one."

But in the end, they discovered that...

Some cases are more painful to solve than to leave unresolved.

This book has no earth-shattering romance, only a group of people gritting their teeth and struggling to survive through turbulent times. When they laugh, they truly laugh. When they cry, they truly cry. You may think you're reading a mystery, but what you're really seeing is the story of people in an era when everyone fought desperately to live, yet no one lived long.

Premise: This book has no earth-shattering romance, only a group of people gritting their teeth and struggling to survive through turbulent times. When they laugh, they truly laugh. When they cry, they truly cry. You may think you're reading a mystery, but what you're really seeing is the story of people in an era when everyone fought desperately to live, yet no one lived long.