Donghwa Island, it's said, makes the best paper in Joseon Dynasty Korea, and so an arson attack on a boat-load of paper intended for the imperial court brings a team of investigators from the mainland. They include the young, rational-minded Weon-Gyu, who has a talent for what later centuries will call forensics. But no sooner have the mainlanders disembarked than a series of murders begins, apparently fulfilling a shamanist prophecy. Weon-Gyu has to fight his way through thickets of superstition and fear, not to mention smokescreens of official obstruction and local duplicity, to uncover a conspiracy that implicates him in ways he never imagined.