Auditing the Hungry Dead
By @john1208
Teng Hejin was a brilliant, uncompromising corporate auditor whose sharp tongue made him as many enemies as his mind. After a fatal betrayal, he awakens in an eerie, mist-shrouded empire as a disgraced male concubine, exiled to the decaying, famine-struck village of Xuchuan. The desperate villagers believe they are cursed by the 'Hungry Dead,' offering their meager rations to the fog to stave off slaughter. But Hejin’s quick calculations reveal a terrifying truth: the famine is a mathematical impossibility, and the grain is being systematically embezzled through ghost-ledgers. Armed with double-entry bookkeeping and a refusal to die quietly, Hejin begins auditing the haunted supply lines. Meanwhile, the terrifying Imperial Censor, Zong Changying, arrives in disguise to investigate a string of gruesome, seemingly supernatural murders in the capital. As Hejin tracks the missing grain and Changying tracks the killers, a chilling revelation surfaces: the stolen village rations are funding the capital's assassins. The famine and the serial murders are two sides of the exact same conspiracy. Can a proud accountant and a ruthless inquisitor balance the empire's blood-soaked books before the shadows consume them?
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