Song Ci, an apprentice coroner at the Kaifeng Prefecture, discovers half of an official seal while examining a corpse at the Great Xiangguo Temple. The seal, engraved with a pair of tigers, belongs to Li Chongxun, a Privy Council commissioner whose entire family was executed twenty years ago. Stranger still, the other half is hidden in a secret compartment in Song Ci’s father’s study. That night, his father dies suddenly. With his dying breath, he writes in blood on The Washing Away of Wrongs: “Trust not the prime minister.” When Song Ci finds gold leaf identical to the kind used in the prime minister’s residence in his father’s throat, the sound of pursuers’ footsteps rings out beyond the door.
