Unsolved Cases in Bianjing of the Northern Song

Su Miaoyi is a talented young woman with a modest reputation in Bianjing. She earns her living writing storybooks, but lately she has been troubled by a strange problem: she keeps feeling as though another soul lives inside her.

Her mind is inexplicably filled with knowledge she has never studied, from secrets of the imperial court to the art of examining corpses, all of it clear as day. More frightening still, she often dreams at night that she meets a horrible end. The visions of being stabbed or buried alive are so vivid they make her tremble.

Unable to bear it any longer, she sought out the most famous doctor in the city. The old physician felt her pulse for a long while, then stroked his beard and shook his head. “Miss, an evil spirit has entered your body. You suffer from hallucinations, and if this continues, you’ll go mad.”

Su Miaoyi stared at him in astonishment. “Are you certain, sir?”

Who could have guessed that, just hours after receiving a prescription to calm her nerves, she would witness a horrifying scene at noon? The very scene from her dream, in which someone stabbed her through the abdomen, came true in an alley. The victim was the owner of the rouge shop next door, and the murderer’s features were exactly the same as in her dream.

Before she could recover, three days later she dreamed that she was being buried alive beside a ruined temple outside the city. She reported it to the authorities that very night, and the constables really did dig up a man’s corpse at the spot she had named. It was the peddler who had been missing from the city for days.

Thanks to the details she had seen in her dreams, Su Miaoyi repeatedly uncovered crucial clues. Even Constable Zhuang of the prefectural yamen came to admire her, inviting her along whenever a strange case arose.

Later...

Su Miaoyi banged on the doors of the prefectural yamen. “Constable Zhuang, take your men to the dry well in the western suburbs at once! If we’re late, it’ll be too late!”

Su Miaoyi rode after the patrol. “Deputy Magistrate Li, I know the flaw in the murderer’s story in the case at the silk shop on East Street!”