The Chronicles of Si Jin

In the forty-fourth year of the Wanli reign, the capital glittered with lights, but beneath the surface, all was cold ash. Lu Zhiyuan, an Imperial Censor of Burnt History, alone possesses the power to read the flickering flames within people's hearts. The court has a secret law: when the heart dies, one becomes a good citizen; when the heart lives, one becomes a source of calamity. Sent west on a secret mission to the barren wastes, he must identify those who still harbor a will to live amid the chaos. At his side, the court's spies keep him under constant watch. On one side, the emperor's command weighs like a mountain; on the other, the people are driven to the brink. Caught between the royal way and the human world, he sets brush to paper and secretly records a chronicle of the Censors of Burnt History. Across the barren wastes, tiny flames flicker. No one knows what turmoil his journey west will unleash.