Top panel: Mei Qing stands in the records hall aisle with a bronze basin and wooden ruler, face visible in determined annoyance. Bottom panel: Tao Yi waits near the rare-documents door with a thin knife hidden inside his sleeve, eyes on Sen

Panel 1: Mei Qing strikes the bronze basin with the ruler. Panel 2: unnamed clerks leap up, one spilling ink, another rescuing a tea kettle. Panel 3: Senior Clerk Guan's hat flies into an ink basin as he wakes in panic.

Top panel: Tao Yi slides into the rare-documents room, small body half-hidden by the heavy door, face in calm profile. Bottom panel: from inside the colder room, the door closes on the records hall chaos outside; the lighting shifts to dim

A narrow cold room of lacquered boxes, old silk ties, and low shelves. Dust motes drift in a single shaft of light. Tao Yi stands on a footstool to read labels, his oversized robe hem pooling around his feet.

Top panel: Tao Yi pulls a black lacquer box from beneath two obsolete rainfall registers and a dead moth. Bottom panel: close on cracked red lacquer seal impressed with the mark of Sui Peak, old and functional, not decorative.

Top panel: Tao Yi warms a thin plain knife over a small oil lamp, his face lit from below and fully visible in concentration. Bottom panel: the knife carefully lifts the edge of the old lacquer seal without shattering it; his ink-stained fi

The lacquer box lies open on the floor. Inside is a stack of bamboo slips tied with darkened silk, plain and old, no glow, no ornament. Tao Yi kneels before it like a swordsman before a blade, but his hands reach for paperwork.

Top panel: Tao Yi stands rigidly with the contract slips in both hands, lamp glow on his face. Bottom panel: he has sat down on the floor among dust and old boxes, reading the same line again, expression blank and cold.

Extreme close-up of Tao Yi's dark jade-green eyes above the edge of the contract slips; the white streak at his temple cuts through shadow. His pupils reflect the old characters bone and blood.

Panel 1: Tao Yi opens the current registry to Lin family entries. Panel 2: he opens an older burial ledger to a child death entry. Panel 3: his brush hovers over the first forged connection, a neat entry in an older hand.

Top panel: Tao Yi places the contract back into the lacquer box, hands precise. Bottom panel: he presses the lifted seal edge back into place so the crack looks old and untouched, the practical care of a clerk returning a dangerous object t

Top panel: Mei Qing leans into the rare-documents room doorway, face visible, one braid loosened from running the fake drill. Bottom panel: Tao Yi stands beside a shelf with empty hands, calm, the lacquer box hidden back in place behind him

In Tao Yi's rented room at night, a plain blank stitched booklet lies open on the floor beside a single lamp. Tao Yi's small hand writes Private Ledger. Case 001. His black cord bracelet and ink-stained fingers are sharply framed; his face