Chang'an Strange Case Files: Wei Changjun Investigates

Synopsis of Chang'an's Strange Case Files: Wei Changjun Investigates

Chang'an, the tenth year of Yuanhe.

Wei Changjun, an Assistant Judge at the Court of Judicial Review, came from a collateral branch of the Jingzhao Wei clan. A successful candidate in the imperial examinations from a family fallen on hard times, he had no military power to his name. Armed only with a copy of The Tang Code with Commentary and a smattering of medicine and illusion techniques, he struggled alone on the fringes of the treacherous late Tang court. Deep in his heart, he harbored an obsession: when he was young, his family was caught up in a “strange case” and died under a cloud of injustice. Since then, he had been convinced that there were no ghosts or gods in this world, only human hearts hiding behind the excuse of “evil spirits.”

By Qujiang Pond, an imperial exam candidate was brutally “skinned alive,” and a bloodstained talisman was found. At Ximing Temple, a venerable monk “shed his mortal body and ascended to immortality,” after which monks began dying one after another. In Luoyang’s ghost market, rumors spread about “payment for a life,” and those who broke their contracts were found dead in the streets. At the palace theater, an actor performing The Song of Everlasting Sorrow was supposedly “possessed by a puppet” and attempted an assassination at the song’s most moving moment... One grotesque murder after another, each seeming supernatural, wove a web around Chang'an’s glittering facade.

Following the half of a bronze twin-fish tally clutched by one of the victims, Wei Changjun gradually unraveled the tricks of illusion, the mysteries of poison, and the traps hidden in witness testimony. But he never expected to uncover a secret letter about a Western Regions campaign twenty years earlier, collusion between the Shence Army and regional warlords, and a shocking plot by the eunuch faction to control imperial power through “miracles.” Su Ning, the daughter of a foreign merchant, brought her exotic ingenuity, while Lao Duan, a retired veteran, secretly offered his support. Together, they became faint glimmers of light in the darkness. Yet Li Daoxuan, Chang'an’s foremost illusionist, kept closing in, forcing Wei Changjun to see the truth: these so-called “mysteries” were nothing more than a facade for power struggles and human greed.

From the streets of Chang'an to the salt fields of Yangzhou, from the foreign merchants’ quarter of Xizhou to Luoyang’s ghost market, Wei Changjun solved case after case, exposing the human heart amid the regional warlords’ division of power, the eunuchs’ exclusive influence...