Introduction to The Verdict of the Dark River
When his father falls critically ill, criminal defense lawyer Jiang Yuan is drawn into an unsolved case that has spanned thirteen years. The reopened investigation into the 2009 nameless female corpse case at Baiyun Reservoir uncovers forty-seven bone china teacups engraved with names, a string of victims with red birthmarks behind their ears, and an underwater corpse whose DNA perfectly matches hers.
Determined to uncover the connection between her father, Jiang Zhenguo, once known as the “Iron-Faced Judge,” and the case, Jiang Yuan is caught in the struggle between forensic doctor Chen Duo and detective Lu Shen. A transplantation record hidden in the morgue, a “herself” floating inside a cloning pod, and the bloody list behind police badge number 073547 push her toward the edge of the truth: every murder was data collected for the same experiment on human nature, and her memories had long ago been altered into a perfect loop.
From a tarnished balance-scale pendant to a biological server at the bottom of the reservoir, from the death code hidden in bone china teacups to cloned specimens in an air-raid shelter, Jiang Yuan must carve out a path to survival through a judicial conspiracy and lies about her own bloodline. When the experiment log reveals that she once signed her own death sentence, and every heartbeat triggers a microbomb in her brain, this life-and-death struggle over justice and replication will finally pose the sharpest question on the scales of law:
**If the truth itself is a carefully cultivated poisonous fruit, would you dare pluck it with your own hands?**
