The Li Clan's Torch Passed Down

Long, long ago, there was a small village where a child was born into the Li family. On the night the baby was due, the skies changed and the winds rose. The old clan chief set up an altar, lit three sticks of incense, and knelt to pray to Heaven: May I trade my own years of life for the safe delivery of my grandson. The child was born and named Li Changsheng. His grandfather passed away peacefully after the baby's first month. The villagers said the child had a hard fate and brought misfortune to his kin. They feared and revered him. No one knew that what those three sticks of incense had sent up would have to be repaid. The well water turns black, paper figures roam at night, and seven children share the same dream. The past comes calling, forcing Changsheng to leave home. He starts as an apprentice at an incense shop in the county seat, joins the Night Watch Bureau to solve supernatural cases, travels the jianghu and learns to read people's hearts, until a memorial tablet enshrined for years in an underground palace in the capital reveals his origins. Through the jianghu, the court, and the realms above and below, he gradually uncovers the truth of that night: the child was never meant to be born. What his grandfather traded for was not a birth, but a lie meant to deceive Heaven. Years of life as collateral, incense as proof, karma as debt. This is the story of a man whose name is in Heaven's ledger, paying his debts along the way while protecting everyone around him. In the end, the last stick of incense he burns will be a plea to Heaven to change the rules.