Episode 2 · Carpenter Assassin

Carpenter Assassin

A scholar with sawdust on his sleeves, Shen Wen never wanted anything to do with court politics. He carves wood, he reads, he keeps his head down. Then a royal treasure goes missing and he is standing in the middle of it, face to face with Mu Siqing, a commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard who does not look like a man who asks twice. The thing the guards are hunting for is the Six Harmonies Beast Diagram. Shen Wen knows that name. It is the same diagram that got his whole family killed. Now it sits at the center of a power struggle between the old officials and the new ones, and everyone who touches it seems to end up buried. So he picks up his tools and walks into the Northern Garrison, pretending to be someone he is not. Somewhere in there is the person who ordered his family dead, and somewhere in that diagram is a court secret worth killing over. But the deeper he goes, the more he has to wonder: is he hunting the truth, or is the truth using him to get out?