Cocoon of Lies: A Blood-Tea Guide to Solving Crimes

A wealthy man's mysterious drowning death leads police to the Chen family's monstrous crimes, buried for twenty years. The tea-industry tycoons are implicated when investigators find deadly poison in the tea bag clenched in the victim's hand, while an engraved silver bracelet left at the scene points to Chen Yan, eldest son of the Chen family. When Su Jing, a tea artist, is identified by Chen family matriarch Chen Yuru as her “kidnapped daughter,” a grand scheme of manipulation unfolds in the name of blood ties: a hypnosis chip is implanted, a pollution map is encoded, the truth about switched babies comes to light, and the remains of 37 people emerge from a contaminated zone. While resisting hypnotic control, Su Jing discovers the truth: her biological father, Su Qingshan, was drowned in a reservoir by Chen Yuru. Zhou Ye, an abandoned baby of Chen Yuru's, exposes the radiation-pollution conspiracy with a malformed fetus specimen. After learning that he accidentally killed his biological father, Chen Yan suffers a mental breakdown and drowns himself in a lake. In the end, Su Jing offers herself as a sacrifice, stabbing the hypnosis chip at the back of her neck with a poisoned needle engraved with her father's name, then projecting holographic evidence of the crimes in court. Chen Yuru is brought to justice, and her crimes prompt revisions to the Soil Law. Meanwhile, the chromium-yellow camellia Su Jing plants in the heart of the contaminated zone, named “Broken Mirror,” becomes a symbol of rebirth, like fresh snow across a thousand mountains.