The Unsettled Accounts of the Restoration

Chen Qi, a top artifact restorer, gets caught up in a murder case involving the bizarre death of a wealthy man after authenticating a "secret letter from Kang Youwei," and becomes a wanted fugitive.

During his escape, he is forced to join forces with Zhou Linyuan, a former international police officer, to track down the legendary Reform Treasury of the Royalist Society. The clues lead them deep into Southeast Asia, but it feels as if they've stepped into a murder script written long ago. Penang, Saigon, Bangkok... In every city they visit, someone dies, and the killer's methods are exactly like those used a century ago to eliminate political enemies.

They discover that they aren't searching for treasure, but have stumbled into the bloody internal struggle of a century-old shadow organization called the Committee. Worse still, every death follows the "automatic judgment procedure" laid out in Kang Youwei's secret record, Seven Cities.

When the two are trapped at a deadly auction in Bangkok and the killings begin right on schedule, they finally understand: they're not just investigators, but also the ones being judged in this century-old trial.

A century ago, idealists laid their foundations with sin. A century later, their successors face reckoning amid greed and obsession.

With the truth and immense wealth before them, they must choose: become history's gravediggers, or the keepers of its secrets.