The Isolated Commandery

In the second year of Shenjue, a desolate Juyan outpost is entombed by a lethal sandstorm, severing all ties to the Empire. Inspired by the true wooden-slip case of Yin Shang v. Xu Shengzhi, a blood-stained debt tally ignites a chain of murders among trapped soldiers and settlers. As fear turns neighbors into executioners, a lowly scribe discovers that justice is merely a ghost on the bamboo slips—and that real power breathes in the silence between the official records.