The Tang Dynasty Character Examiner

Someone died in a Chang'an song house. The door was bolted from within, and seven characters were written on the wall in blood and ink: The spring breeze does not pass Yumen Pass.

The constables across the city took it for a love poem. Only Su Mo, a constable of Wannian County, saw the truth: whoever wrote it had held a saber in his left hand, and only started trembling after the killing. His father was a copyist who left him just one saying: "Only when you recognize the traces can you claim to recognize the words."

He took a rubbing to the wine pavilion and asked Wang Changling, Gao Shi, and Wang Zhihuan to interpret the seven characters. They uncovered an old soldier who had walked back from beyond Yumen Pass, and a name reported dead that belonged to someone still alive. The case was solved, but half a page of paper was slipped through the door: You are not the only one reading this case.

Over the next twenty years, he traced a roster to the "well" beneath the grain shipments. Two sets of accounts were each perfectly in order, but together they swallowed a person. The day the well was sealed, the war drums of Yuyang were already drawing near.