Dawn at Last

Lu Ming, captain of the First Criminal Investigation Brigade in Huaibei City.

When she was in middle school, her father died in the line of duty while pursuing a criminal, and his badge number was sealed away with his belongings. In high school, her mother passed away from illness, leaving only her grandmother by her side. With financial support from her father’s former partner, she completed her education, then resolutely applied to the police academy, vowing to carry on her father’s unfinished pursuit of justice. At 23, she officially reactivated her father’s badge number, “0374125,” and became a criminal investigator in Huaibei City.

Song Jiu, forensic pathologist with the First Criminal Investigation Brigade in Huaibei City, formerly a forensic pathologist in Linjiang City.

Song Jiu’s childhood was a book crumpled beyond recognition. Her adoptive parents took her in to fill the emptiness of having no children, but after their biological son, Song Yi, was born, they treated her as “surplus.” She learned early on to survive in the cracks between foster homes, folding away her emotional needs and retreating into the worlds of scalpels and puzzles. After getting into a top medical university, she chose forensic medicine, joking that “corpses are less likely to lie than living people.”

Lu Ming envies how Song Jiu’s “coolness” shields her from emotional pain. Song Jiu admires how Lu Ming’s “warmth” can kindle hope in others. Through their cases, they gradually come to understand that justice can be the sharp edge of a police badge, or the gentleness of a scalpel.

One uses the tenderness of a scalpel to clear away the fog surrounding death and speak for the living.

The other pursues elusive ghosts with the sharp edge of a police badge and wins justice for the dead.

Episodic cases