Funeral makeup artist Chang Xing has a bizarre encounter with a corpse that suddenly comes back to life while she is preparing it, and the shock stops her heart. When she wakes up, she finds herself transported to the eerie and unpredictable Chang'an of the Tang dynasty, sprawled on the cold examination mat of forensic investigator He Shi. One is an outsider with modern expertise in preparing the dead; the other is a cold-faced forensic investigator whose background is shrouded in mystery and who excels at traditional autopsies. Forced to work together, they become embroiled in a series of baffling cases, from a body hidden in a dry well at the imperial examination hall to a ghost-faced stone dagger that claims lives.
As they solve cases, they follow the clues from lapis lazuli powder to slag from an inferior cinnabar mine, each step fraught with danger, and uncover a vast web of corruption in the imperial examinations, hidden in the heart of the dynasty. At the brink of death, Chang Xing's consciousness is forcibly pulled back to the modern world. Decades of life in the past turn out to have been only a few hours of resuscitation, and she has lost all her memories, as if it had all been a dream.
Back to her quiet life, Chang Xing resumes her work at the funeral home, until He Shi arrives as its new forensic consultant. He is young and handsome, yet his eyes seem to carry the weathering of a thousand years. He remembers everything and wears a warm jade cicada. When a string of murders modeled on the Tang dynasty's "debt-marking with coins" method takes place in a modern city, the bizarre details Chang Xing notices while preparing the bodies astonishingly match her hazy dreams. The eerie blue light flickering back on in the funeral home's morgue freezer is like a key that tears through time, instantly awakening Chang Xing's buried memories. "Stone face... Does your leg... still hurt?"
A thousand years of loneliness, and then a reunion in a single day. He has shattered the boundaries of time to fulfill his promise to "solve cases somewhere with electric lights." When modern forensic science meets ancient investigative wisdom, this bickering pair, reunited after a thousand years, join forces once more. As the truth comes to light, the lamps remain lit. This is The Thousand Lamps of Awakening.
