Search Results: 'Yan Qi'

The Dead Grandfather’s Ledger

Words: 1987 · Source Novel:: The Pious Purge

The body of Yan Qi, the last descendant, is found clutching a gold ingot in his ancestral hall. Rumors swirl that the ghost of Yan Erming has returned because his banned poetry collection is being secretly recited. The detective, a rationalist magistrate’s clerk named Cheng, discovers that the gold ingot bears a stamp matching a line from the condemned verses, and that the gold’s purity reveals a hidden numerical code. The investigation begins as a locked-room puzzle: who could enter the hall past the guards, and why was the gold left instead of stolen?