Secrets of Chang'an

When Gu An awoke, he was lying in a courtyard strewn with corpses.

His clothes were soaked in blood, his identity unknown. There were fifteen bodies around him, and he was the only survivor.

Before he could figure out how he had gone from being a modern-day detective to an investigative officer at the Court of Judicial Review, a man calling himself Li Xuan kicked open the courtyard gate. A collateral member of the Zhao Commandery Li clan, an aristocratic scion, and a sixth-rank judicial officer, he hadn’t come to catch a killer. He was looking for a secret letter, hidden in Lai Junchen’s stronghold, the “Furnace.” Whoever found it would gain one more move on Wu Zetian’s chessboard.

Seven days. The Empress herself was overseeing the case. Fail to solve it, and he’d have to present his head.

This was only the first case.

From the massacre in Yongning Ward to a sealed chamber in the Daming Palace, and then to unidentified bones by the Luo River, every case was like a bead on a string, linked by an invisible thread. Gu An gradually realized that the body he had transmigrated into seemed to be caught on that same thread.

His partner, Li Xuan, once told him, “In the Tang dynasty, a blade isn’t the only thing that can kill you. There are also family registers, imperial edicts, and the words ‘The Emperor has decreed.’”

From criminal cases to the imperial court, from aristocratic clans to the inner palace, from a set of unidentified bones to a conspiracy to overthrow a dynasty…

The game of chess had only just begun.