The Bone Painter

Name: The Bone Painter
Author: Wandering the World, Splashing Ink

绘骨师

by Wandering the World, Splashing Ink (云游泼墨)

Status: Completed
Length: 930k Words
Genre: Mystery
Subgenre: Female-Channel Mystery
Updated: 9mo ago
Source: Fanqie

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Stats

335Chapters

109Reads

40Listens

16.1kReads · all time

Synopsis

Su Qing, a forensic sketch artist in modern times, dies unexpectedly while protecting a crucial piece of evidence, the Seven Hells Diagram. When she opens her eyes again, she has become Yun Zhi, the daughter of a disgraced official in ancient times. Faced with her family’s ruin and the desperate plight of being reduced to a slave, she relies on her extraordinary skills in “reconstructing faces from skulls” and “drawing a person as they will look at three” to carve out a chance to survive at the Jingzhao Prefecture government office. A charred corpse from the Hundred Blossoms Brothel brings her face-to-face with Prince Jing, Xiao Jue, whose power holds sway over the court. He tears up her drawing paper. “Stop playing at being a spirit medium!” She reconstructs the victim’s face. “The skull is fractured and the hyoid bone is broken. This was murder!” A carefully rendered beauty mark clears Xiaodie, a maid who vanished six months ago, and for the first time, a storm ripples across Xiao Jue’s icy gaze. When a famed courtesan’s maid “accidentally” falls into a well and dies, and an undercover guard investigating the case is ambushed by the mysterious organization Shadow Pavilion, Yun Zhi wields her brush like a blade, sketching the culprit and reconstructing crime scenes. From identifying features in charred bones to piecing together memories, from drawing the real culprit to profiling their psyche, she uses modern forensic techniques to outclass the ancient world’s criminal investigations. The very Prince Jing who once looked down on her shields her from a poisoned arrow in a life-or-death moment, even invoking a forbidden imperial art to forge a “life-and-death pact.” “Draw the culprit, and I’ll grant you one wish.” He grinds her ink himself, watching her pale yet resolute profile, and finally understands that this woman is the one riddle he will never solve in his lifetime. When every clue points to secrets hidden deep within the palace, and the truth about her bloodline of mask-makers comes to light, Yun Zhi uses her own blood as ink before the imperial throne to draw the Diagram of Self-Condemnation and clear her family’s name. Xiao Jue renounces his princely title and points his sword to the heavens. “Your brush exposes every injustice under heaven. My sword will shatter the fate that binds you!”

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