The New Judge Bao: A Master Detective

During the Northern Song, in the city of Tokyo, now Kaifeng, the misty, rainy season brought the perfect weather for cicadas to chirp softly and breezes to brush one's face. Yet this tranquility was shattered by a bizarre case. That night, the people of the capital were preparing for the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival. The streets were bustling, and lanterns blazed brightly. Bao Zheng, the Kaifeng Prefect renowned for his impartiality and integrity, sat quietly in his office, pondering a case he had yet to fully unravel. The case did not begin with an obvious murder, but with a strange disappearance that seemed to have no connection to anything else. A young musician named Chen Han lived in the southeastern corner of Kaifeng. He was a skilled player of the qin, and had earned some renown in his day. One day, Chen Han suddenly vanished. People guessed that he might have left because he was unhappy, or that some misfortune had befallen him. What was strange, however, was that his qin strings had been left behind in the room where the incident took place, while notes yet to be played still hung from the instrument. It was amid this case shrouded in layers of mystery that Bao Zheng received a plea for help.