The Forgotten Arts

The story so far

The Seal Under the Floor (chapters 1-10)

Shen Mo, the martial master called First Under Heaven, crosses the burning roofs of Origin Gate faster than the arrows chasing him. He arrives too late. His school is dying, and beneath the main hall its physician, Su Qingyue, lies over a jade seal, barely breathing. When he tries to save her, the seal closes over him. He wakes beneath a kung fu school in present-day Redwood Harbor, next to a locked room where a relic broker named Nolan Price lies dead without a mark on his skin. Homicide detective Su Yue arrests the stranger in bloodstained robes, and Mo goes still: she has Qingyue's face. He reads the dead man's body the way she reads a crime scene. He can also slip her handcuffs whenever he likes. So why does he stay?

A Witness in Two Centuries (chapters 11-20)

No database knows Shen Mo, but the oldest photograph at the Wang Clan Ancient Martial Hall does: the same face, labeled First Under Heaven, with a note to wait until the man returned. Lieutenant Carmen Vega, Su Yue's commanding officer, releases Mo to the school's keeper, Wang Dehai, as a material witness and a suspect at once. Then the hunt for Qingyue's missing medicine box turns violent. A watcher steals the dead man's storage claim and nearly brings a fire escape down on a crowd. A locked storage unit holds a young woman who can breathe but cannot move, and six armed collectors are coming back for the crate. Su insists on doing it by the book, and Mo must learn to follow her lead in a city where every phone is a witness.

Stolen Breath (chapters 21-32)

Qingyue's medicine box has surfaced, but whoever struck Nolan Price is still out there, carrying qi stolen from other bodies. Su Yue has rules for her strangest witness. Shen Mo has a past he will not explain. Redwood Harbor is about to give them more lives to save.

The Same Face (chapters 33-47)

Why does a Redwood Harbor homicide detective wear the face of a physician from a fallen martial school? Su Yue wants evidence, not destiny. Shen Mo wants the truth about Qingyue. The closer they come to either answer, the more dangerous the question becomes.

What the Living Are Owed (chapters 48 onward)

Someone in Redwood Harbor knows exactly what Shen Mo is, and what the jade seal beneath the Wang school once held. Su Yue has already staked her credibility on him. Before this is over, both of them must choose what they owe the living and what they owe the dead.

Chapters 21+ unlock with coins or Unlimited.