Forensic examiner Chen Shi dies suddenly and awakens in the Great Chen Dynasty, inhabiting Shen Anyi, an impoverished scholar. He comes to in a coffin being carried to a mass grave.
In this dynasty, scholars are valued above warriors. Murders are frequent, the courts are inept, and the common people trust ghosts over reason. He turns to his uncle, Shen Jiugao, an old coroner with the Court of Justice, but is met with cold stares when he first enters the mortuary.
While washing a decomposing corpse, he unexpectedly gains a golden finger. The instant he touches a bone, the dead person's final moments flood his mind: gold-threaded embroidered shoes, a woman's cold laugh.
He can read the last ten seconds of memories left in bones, identify wounds and poison, and determine the time of death with the precision of a modern forensic examiner.
Using this ability, he solves a voyeurism murder, exposes a wife's conspiracy, and earns a reputation for solving cases like a god. People say he is haunted by dark forces.
His colleagues ostracize him and the people fear him, but he advances step by step, joining the Court of Justice and solving the Human-Faced Candle case, which catches the attention of Princess Xiao Lingyi.
When the Office of Criminal Investigation is established, he becomes its first associate investigator, using science to dispel superstition and logic to tear apart lies.
From the streets to the imperial court, a chain of bizarre cases all leads back to a palace coup twenty years ago.
Nine sinister bones appear, blood seeps from a jade cicada, and the mystery of the Guiwei year comes to light, along with the shocking truth of his origins.
He will expose the imperial family's secrets, put an end to the bone ritual, establish the Bone Evidence Code, and rewrite the fate-bound world.
