The One Who Takes Orders: He Won't Live Past Twenty-Eight

Wen Xian is the last fate-hearer in the world. She can hear the threads of fate binding every person. On the day she was married into the Huo family in someone else's place, she heard that her husband, Huo Lin, was leaking life away.

Everyone in the city said he wouldn't live to see twenty-eight. She trusted her ears: it wasn't an illness. Someone was cutting away his life, one slash at a time.

Sixteen years ago, her mother, Wen Wan, entered the Huo family to read Huo Lin's fate. When she left his study, her thread of fate had snapped completely. The next day, she was pronounced dead from a sudden illness. Now Wen Xian has entered the Huo home to find the same answer: Who is cutting away Huo Lin's life, and who severed the last thread binding her mother?

But as she investigates, she discovers that her fate and Huo Lin's have long been bound together by a single thread: if he lives, so does she; if he dies, she cannot survive either.

The black coffin buried underground is gradually coming to light. It has spent a century devouring the lives of the Huo family's eldest sons, feeding on their lifespans to buy the family wealth and status. The only thing that can break the chains binding the coffin is the fate-hearer's own life force. And that was precisely why her mother died in the Huo home all those years ago.

This time, she will be the one to cut the chains.