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

Wen Xian is the last person in the world who can hear the threads of fate. She can hear the thread of fate belonging to every person. On the day she enters the Huo family as a bride in a marriage arranged in someone else's place, she hears that her husband, Huo Lin, is running out of life.

Everyone in the city says he won't live to see twenty-eight. She trusts her ears: it isn't an illness. Someone is cutting away his life, one slash at a time.

Sixteen years ago, her mother, Wen Wan, entered the Huo family to listen to Huo Lin's thread of fate. When she walked out of the study, her own thread had snapped completely. The next day, she was declared dead from a sudden illness. Now Wen Xian has come to the Huo family seeking the same answer: who is cutting away Huo Lin's life, and who severed her mother's final thread?

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, she lives; if he dies, she won't survive either.

Beneath the ground, a black coffin emerges into view, one that has fed on the lives of the Huo family's eldest sons for a hundred years, sustaining wealth and power through lives exchanged. The only way to break its chains is with the life force of a listener. And it was for this very reason that her mother died in the Huo family all those years ago.

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