The Purple Python Bloodvine Chronicles

When the miasma-laden rain swept across Menggen Prefecture, the towering trees in the forest bent like servants bowing low. Jiang Guotai huddled inside a hollow bodhi tree. His gold-threaded python robe had soaked up the damp, wrapping around him like the sloughed skin of an old snake. For the first time in forty years, he saw his fingers, dry as bamboo. So the Imperial Workshops' vermilion seal paste had seeped into his very bones.

The instant the trigger clicked, twenty cherry blossoms burst open at the center of a target a hundred meters away. It was like the unspoken affection left unconfessed in that equipment room, the stolen sweet kiss beneath the banyan tree at the border, and the oath spoken aboard an armored vehicle, heavy with the smell of rust. In the end, they all became the cracking report of a bullet piercing time, even his knuckles stained red with cinnabar.

Treasure hunting, revenge, and a life lived on one's own terms.