The Life-Locking Chess Game

A bloodstained game of chess exposes twenty years of buried bones. Beneath the shadow of imperial power, who controls the pieces of life and death? Shen Moyi, Junior Minister of the Dali Temple, investigates the imperial prison by night. His ice-blue pupils reflect the unfinished records of three bizarre cases, and the blood trail in a matricide case turns out to match half of a jade token held by Xiao Jingyan, Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard. When a “storm of logic” collides with an all-seeing strategic mind, a string of murders unveils the imperial family's record of purging its bloodline, while the prison's candlelight burns the deduced truth into a death warrant. The secret agents of the Six Gates have already laid a deadly trap, while the Embroidered Uniform Guard's sealed files conceal a shocking upheaval. Only when the game reaches its end do they realize: every living person is a pawn daubed with vermilion on the chessboard.