Born into a family of Southern Song officials, he passed the second-class imperial examination and was appointed assistant magistrate of Xinfeng County in Jiangxi, beginning his career in government. During his more than twenty years in office, Song Ci served several times as a senior judicial commissioner: he was judicial commissioner of Guangdong, judicial commissioner of Jiangxi as well as magistrate of Qianzhou (present-day Gan County), and judicial commissioner of Hunan with the rank of Secretariat Library. Drawing on his own experience investigating cases, he wrote the five-volume Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified. Stories of his criminal investigations have been passed down among the people for centuries. He was Song Ci, the renowned Song Dynasty detective.
