Admonitions Written in White Bone

This age of prosperity is told through the testimony of bones.

Shen Jie is a female coroner hidden away in the mortuary.

She examines corpses and measures wounds, eavesdropping on the last truths the dead left behind in rotting flesh and withered bones.

Everyone says that with eyes able to see through the underworld, she was born for this line of work.

Until the “curse case”: the Crown Prince’s Tutor bleeds from all seven orifices and drops dead in his study. The entire court claims that ghosts and gods have taken his life.

But Shen Jie presents her evidence before the court, her voice cool and clear:

“The deceased was not cursed. He was poisoned. The poison is called ‘Tears of Red Robes.’ It comes from southern Yunnan and surfaced ten years ago during the case of the rebel prince. It should have been destroyed in the palace medicine vault.”

Her words leave the Golden Hall in silence.

The old treason case, sealed away by the emperor himself, is violently torn open at the seams as the corpse speaks.

On the dragon throne, the young emperor Xiao Li lowers his lashes. For the first time, his gaze truly falls on the slender, bamboo-like figure kneeling in the hall.

He remembers her.

Three years ago, she was the daughter of a renowned judicial family. When her family became entangled in the rebel prince’s case, every man in the household was beheaded and the women were exiled.

Now she has returned, armed with skills learned among mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and branded with the inescapable mark of being a descendant of a disgraced minister.

“Investigate.”

Xiao Li gives only this one-word order.

He wants to see whether this woman who crawled back from hell intends to overturn the verdict, or drag the entire dynasty onto her autopsy table to be buried alongside her.