The Phoenix Sugar-Painting Detective

Ji Huan, the ten-year-old magistrate of Taiping County, is a goofy little boy who can solve cases only with secret signals from his childhood sweetheart, Liu Ye’er. The little notebook of her “phoenix-shaped sugar paintings” hides clues to each case: a phoenix pecking at rice, fake weights, an account book dotted with ink...

“This is the footprint of the grain thief!” Ji Huan shouts, holding up a doodle loud enough to shake the heavens. Then he mistakes a phoenix-shaped “unicycle” for a “phoenix-headed dragon boat.” Liu Ye’er rolls her eyes and knocks him on the head. “You idiot, look carefully! It’s a unicycle for pushing a Buddha statue!”

From a temple donation scam to a prefect’s corruption scheme, these betrothed childhood sweethearts split their duties: one cracks jokes in court, while the other gathers evidence on the streets. The phoenix sugar paintings expose the twists and turns of the adult world. When the prefect produces a forged document, Liu Ye’er brings out her “Phoenix Sugar-Painting Detective Picture Book,” where she has already drawn the truth, complete with the villagers’ fingerprints

“Brother Ji Huan, if you keep misreading my drawings, I’ll draw you as a little mud monkey!”

“Don’t do that, Ye’er! These sugar-painting clues are top-notch. Let’s go solve another big case!”

Click in and watch an eight-year-old prodigy solve cold cases with sugar paintings, while a goofy magistrate waves doodles around as hard evidence. The laughs are sweeter than candied hawthorns!