The Brocade Guard's Mystery: The Soul-Locking Case of Jinling

In the spring of the nineteenth year of Yongle, three candidates died one after another in Yingtian Prefecture, each in a bizarre manner. The first was found drowned in the Qinhuai River, clutching a “substitution contract,” though there was no water in his lungs. The second had his throat slit by an “invisible blade” in his examination cell at the provincial examination compound. The only clue at the scene was half a charred page from the Analects. The third had the symbol “≯” carved into his chest, and a copy of the banned Ten-day Lecture Records, missing for ten years, hidden in his robes.

Shen Yanbing, a senior Embroidered Uniform Guard, was ordered to investigate. During an autopsy, he crossed paths with Su Wanyue, a female litigator who was the daughter of a key figure in the Ten-day Lecture Records case ten years earlier. They discovered that every clue pointed to the upcoming spring examinations. The “lucky charms” handed out to candidates contained ink sticks made from the hair of the dead. The waist badges worn by the examination officials bore the same design as the badge of an Embroidered Uniform Guard captain who had disappeared ten years earlier. And the mysterious woman in red seen at each crime scene looked exactly like Shen Yanbing’s late mother in her portrait.

As the investigation deepened, Shen Yanbing discovered in the Imperial Prison that someone had altered his father’s interrogation records from years ago. Meanwhile, Su Wanyue deciphered a clue from her mother’s final words: “Beneath the Mirror Flower and Moonlight Pavilion lie irrefutable proofs of cheating in the imperial examinations.” When the two of them uncovered the final mystery at the execution ground on a rainy night, they realized the true “soul-locking trap” had been laid long ago: every suspect’s name had been carved into the Register of Substitute Deaths at Yingtian Prefecture’s City God Temple ten years earlier...