The bells of the Forbidden City tolled midnight, their heavy bronze echoes rolling over the frost-dusted tiles of the Ming capital like a funeral dirge. In the fourteenth year of the Emperor's reign, the red walls of the palace did not just symbolize power—they were a cage for the living and a shroud for the dead.
Lin Xiyao clutched her worn cedar medical chest to her chest, her breath hitching in the frigid air as she was hurried through the shadows of the Pavilion of Thousand Autumns. As a low-ranking physician in the Imperial Academy of Medicine, she was usually relegated to grinding herbs for aging concubines. But tonight, the air smelled of something far more potent than sandalwood incense: it smelled of raw, metallic iron and wet fur.
"Faster, Physician Lin," hissed Eunuch Zhao, his voice trembling like a dry leaf. "If the Emperor wakes and the Pavilion is still a slaughterhouse, our heads will decorate the Meridian Gate by dawn".
They reached the heavy vermilion doors of the pavilion. They were locked from the inside, yet the heavy scent of slaughter seeped through the cracks. Standing guard were the Jinyiwei—the Brocade-Clad Guards. Their embroidered uniforms, depicting golden flying fish, shimmered ominously under the torchlight.
Xiyao's gaze instinctively sought the man at the center of the formation. Lu Yan, the Commander of the Jinyiwei, stood as still as a stone monument. His reputation was that of a "cold-blooded hound," a man who could extract a confession from a corpse. He didn't look at her; his eyes remained fixed on the moon, which hung in the sky like a bloated, pale eye.
The doors were pried open. Xiyao stepped inside and nearly retched.
The Minister of Rites, a man who had once stood tall in the Imperial Court, was now little more than a collection of shredded silk and mangled bone. He lay in the center of a "locked-room" crime scene, surrounded by undisturbed scrolls and unlit candles.
"Analyze it," Lu Yan's voice commanded. It was deep, resonant, and carried a strange, gravelly edge that made the hair on Xiyao's neck stand up.
Xiyao knelt beside the remains. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but she forced her hands to remain steady as she opened her kit. This was her secret—the "Heavenly Forensic" Golden Finger. To others, she was merely a girl with silver needles; to her, the world was a map of extractable truths.
She reached for her longest needle, made of pure celestial silver. System, initiate extraction, she whispered in the silence of her mind.
A faint, ethereal hum resonated through her fingertips. As the needle touched a deep gouge in the Minister's throat, a translucent screen of information flickered before her eyes, invisible to the guards looming over her:
[Heavenly Forensic Extraction Successful] Target: Fatal Wound Cause of Death: Cervical vertebrae crushed by 4,000 psi of pressure. Saliva enzymes detected. Foreign Element Extracted: One follicle of non-human origin.
Xiyao's breath hitched. She pulled the needle back. Caught in the tiny, microscopic groove of the silver tip was a single, translucent strand of hair—long, coarse, and shimmering with a faint, predatory silver-white luster.
It wasn't from a dog. It wasn't from a wolf of the northern steppes.
She looked at the Minister's chest. The silk had been torn not by a blade, but by five distinct points—claws that had moved with surgical precision and monstrous strength.
A shadow fell over her. Lu Yan was standing directly behind her, his presence radiating an unnatural heat that defied the winter chill. Xiyao looked up, and for the first time, her eyes met his. For a fleeting second, his pupils didn't look round. They seemed to flicker, narrowing into vertical golden slits that reflected the dying torchlight.
"What did you find, Physician Lin?" he asked, stepping closer until she could smell the faint, musk-heavy scent of the forest clinging to his embroidered robes.
Xiyao glanced at the silver hair on her needle, then at the man whose secret was now literally in her hands. If she spoke the truth, she was a dead woman. If she lied, she was an accomplice to a monster.
"I found..." her voice steadied, her "Golden Finger" pulsing with a warning of imminent danger. "I found that the killer is still within these walls, Commander Lu".
Lu Yan's hand moved to the hilt of his blade, his fingers tightening with a strength that could crush iron. The hunt had begun.