A Logic of Phosphor Flames

In 745 CE, on the desolate Tang frontier, a brilliant officer named Shen Xiuyan designs a flawless murder disguised as a trivial forced purchase. When a commoner's complaint drags him into the cold machinery of Hezhou's yamen, he manipulates every legal article to turn justice into a weapon. But his impeccable logic births ghosts that no statute can silence—soon he is haunted by the very rules he mastered, watching mercy flicker like phosphor fire over grey borderlands, forever caught between the perfection of his crime and the slow flaying of his soul.