Li Ke, a law student, transmigrates into the Great Qin Dynasty and becomes a lowly prison clerk.
Here, the laws are ironclad and torture is commonplace. A good official is one who “kills by the book.”
When he tries to defend a prisoner with the principle “innocent until proven guilty,” his superior lashes him viciously. “Qin law doesn’t care about motives. It only decides life or death!”
Using modern forensic reasoning, he clears wrongful convictions and rises through the ranks to the heart of the empire’s judicial system.
Little does he know that he has stepped into the most dangerous game of all: an arms black market, a mystery surrounding an attempted assassination, the burning of books and the burying of scholars… Eyes watch from the shadows at every turn.
His closest friend is silenced. Confucian scholars are buried alive. Ancient texts go up in flames.
In the darkness, with civilization on the verge of being lost forever, Li Ke makes one final choice:
He will engrave the seeds of the rule of law onto a medium more durable than bamboo slips, and hide them along the path history is destined to take.
Two thousand years later, when archaeologists open a mysterious bronze casket, everyone will learn the truth:
There was once a humble clerk who became a lamp, illuminating the true face of justice.
