The Book of Ashen Rivers

"You want absolute imperial power. I want these bones to speak the truth."

The prayer beads around Xie Heng's wrist were soaked in fifteen years of rust-colored blood.

Whenever he cut open the throat of a charred corpse, he remembered his mother's fingers, burned to ash in the seventh year of Yongning, until that night when Xiao Jingyi strode through the moonlight scattered across the Imperial Censorate and tossed a bloodstained file of broken porcelain pieces onto his desk.

Everyone said the Fifth Prince was a frivolous libertine, unaware of the vicious blood flowing beneath his black python robe. When Vermilion Bird Street swallowed its ninth charred corpse, Xie Heng caught the scent of agarwood from an old friend's lips on his autopsy knife.

"Your Highness wants me to be your blade?"

"No." Xiao Jingyi's sword tassel caught on his bloodstained bandage. "I want someone to stand beside me in the unrecorded darkness of history and watch the ashes flare back to life."

In the palace's game of intrigue, every move became a prophecy. One of them dug open old wounds to search for the truth; the other spent three generations' worth of effort laying a deadly trap. On the day the beams of the ancestral temple collapsed, the historian's trembling pen hung in midair.

In the fragmentary records, two skeletons embraced, clutching half a tiger tally. Where the prayer beads and sword tassel entwined lay a love that history books dared not name.

◆ A beautiful, unhinged prince gong x a cold, ruthless minister shou

◆ Two male leads who love and fight each other / political intrigue wrapped around a sugar-coated blade / true feelings carved out of the ashes

◆ "I want you to watch as we burn a hole through this land that devours its people."

Theme: World peace