A body without a wound. A drowning in water too shallow to drown in. A death by a weapon no one has ever seen. And a woman who existed in no record at all, found dead behind a door locked for twenty years, a letter for the Emperor still in her hand.
Ding Chuan left the Shadow Department four years ago and has spent most of his time since drinking cheap wine and waiting for clients who never pay on time. He wants nothing from the palace. But the palace wants something from him: a case that four bodies and thirty-one years of silence have built, one no one inside those red walls can afford to solve honestly.
As Ding Chuan follows the thread, he finds a court where every prince, eunuch, and physician is playing a game with rules only they know, and where the softest voice in the room is often the one holding the sharpest knife. What he uncovers will reach further than a single murder. It will reach into the bloodline of the throne itself.
Thousand Faces is the second novel in the Ding Chuan Series, a wuxia mystery for readers who love court intrigue, morally complicated investigators, and secrets with decades of patience behind them.
