On a rainy night, a body is found marked with magnolia embroidery. After ten years, an unjust case is reopened.
The youngest coroner in Shuntian Prefecture, known as “Brother Shen,” is actually Shen Qingci, a woman disguised as a man. She hides her identity to uncover the truth behind her father's wrongful accusation of treason ten years ago, which brought ruin upon their whole family. A wealthy merchant's corpse, blood congealed at all seven orifices, bears a hidden magnolia motif on the collar, identical to the mark of “rebels” in her father's old case. The case remains unsolved, and a conspiracy is already unfolding.
A string of poisonings, shadowy palace secrets, and deadly clues beneath the coroner's knife.
The current chancellor, Li Si, appears again and again in the background of the murders, while the sudden arrival of the mysterious young master Xiao Yu makes everything even more inscrutable. From the streets to the imperial palace, from the Imperial Medical Bureau to the royal mausoleum, every corpse tells of a crime buried from view. With a coroner's eye, Shen Qingci unravels the mysteries of poison and gradually pieces together a horrifying truth through autopsy knives and silver needles: the magnolia mark is not a sign of treason, but a clue to a secret edict left by the late emperor. The Noble Consort's sudden death, loyal ministers dying unjustly, and the systematic silencing of former naval officers all point to a court upheaval twenty years in the making.
The imperial seal emerges, two emperors vie for the throne, and she alone can set the realm right.
When the late emperor's private seal, “For Imperial Review, Yongchang,” resurfaces, the Empress Dowager's secret Shadow Pavilion is exposed, and an army of puppets controlled by “Waters of the Forgotten River” reaches the city gates, Shen Qingci stands at the heart of the storm with her father's Poison Compendium and a magnolia hairpin in hand. She examines the dead, solves the cases, exposes the schemes, and defends justice in the world of the living.
This is a battle fought with corpses as paper and truth as ink.
This is the legend of a woman who, as a coroner, exposes palace plots, clears her family's name, and secures the realm.
