Cases in Red: A Day of Investigations with the Top Scholar

Lu Mingyuan, courtesy name Moqing, is the newly crowned top scholar and magistrate of Qinghe County. He’s handsome, capable, and sharp at his job. Too bad he can’t keep his mouth shut:

He criticizes the dead for their appearance during autopsies, calls suspects stupid and whiny during interrogations, and even turns his childhood sweetheart’s lovingly prepared lunch into “rice mixed with arsenic.”

Then he meets Shen Qingyi.

This “frail” beauty has returned to the capital. She looks as gentle as a little white flower, but in the medical world, she’s a living demon:

She can stick a gold needle in your sleep acupoint, or smile while explaining, “This corpse’s liver is fresher than your conscience.”

When the sharp-tongued magistrate meets the scheming physician:

He investigates a case: “The victim’s pupils are dilated. He must have been terrified.”

She twists the knife: “No, your official hat fell on his face.”

He gets stabbed: “I’m fine...”

She sticks him with a needle: “Shut up and take off your pants.”

With a goofy, martial-arts-obsessed bodyguard who’s constantly left questioning his life by the maid, and a drama-loving maid who specializes in delivering her mistress’s cutting remarks,

the four of them launch into full-throttle investigations:

They crack a case involving stolen silver from the canal transport system, and the bodyguard performs an underwater act of swallowing a live fish whole.

They raid a brothel to catch a painted-skin monster, and the magistrate’s forced turn as a “top courtesan” goes disastrously wrong.

Best of all, when poison strikes the border town, the physician declares, “I can save you, but first, sign this deed of servitude!”

Liu Rumei, the capital’s number-one drama queen, keeps making a scene:

“Brother Mingyuan, she’s being mean to me!”

“Lu Mingyuan, look! She’s sticking me with a needle!”