A Burning Voice

Criminal investigator Lin Mo takes on a bizarre murder case: a successful entrepreneur was burned alive on the rooftop terrace of his luxury apartment. There was no accelerant, no ignition device, and the security footage showed only the man suddenly bursting into flames and writhing in agony until he was reduced to charcoal, as if struck by "divine punishment" from the void. Stranger still, the autopsy revealed that the victim's heart had stopped from sheer terror before the flames consumed him. Was the piercing scream that echoed across the terrace a hallucination, or a curse from a restless spirit?

When a second and third similar "high-rise immolation case" occur, Lin Mo discovers that all the victims were prominent figures at the "top" of their respective fields, and that each had received an anonymous text containing a fire emoji before dying. He is forced to work with Su Wan, a professor who studies folklore and the collective unconscious. Together, they must uncover an ancient ritual hidden behind an urban legend: the "Karmic Fire Sacrifice." Someone is using modern people's fears and sins as fuel to carry out a series of precise "judgments." And Lin Mo's past seems to be intricately connected to this blaze...