As Lu Qingxuan headed down the mountain with a cloth bundle on his back, his mind was full of his master’s instructions to “gain experience in the mortal world.” He never imagined he’d end up dealing with the police.
The murder in the wasteland on the outskirts of town was downright eerie. The victim had died under mysterious circumstances, and the only trace left at the scene was a circle of charred talisman marks. While the veteran detectives milled around, this young upstart crouched beyond the police tape, twirling the tassel of his peachwood sword. “I can solve this case.”
The laughter nearly shook the leaves from the trees overhead.
“Where’d this amateur come from? Since when do we need someone chanting spells and drawing talismans to investigate a case?”
“Get back to your temple. Stop getting in the way!”
But the next day, the spot he’d calculated with a hand seal really did yield the murder weapon buried underground. And his casual remark that the crime had been committed during the yin hour matched the surveillance timestamps down to the second. When the long-buried truths revealed by his Taoist arts came to light, everyone who had laughed at him was left speechless.
“Daoist Lu... no, Officer Lu! What do you think we should do next?”
“This report... I mean, this analysis of the talisman marks. Could you take a look?”
From then on, the police station had an oddball who wore a uniform but carried a compass. From a so-called charlatan no one believed in to a top criminal investigator who solved one strange case after another with the Eight Trigrams and the Art of Qimen, Lu Qingxuan watched the rank insignia on his shoulder climb at breakneck speed and sighed toward his master’s memorial tablet. If he’d known coming down the mountain meant having to study the Criminal Law, he should’ve memorized a couple more volumes of the temple’s Casebook of Criminal Investigations.
This book is very well written.