Bones Speak in the Deep Mansion: Shen Qingzhi

Shen Ning, chief female forensic pathologist at the Nanshi Public Security Bureau, had never made a mistake at the autopsy table. After an accident, she opened her eyes as Shen Qingzhi, the foolish daughter of the Yong'an Earl's household, who had spent ten years in a daze.

Her birth mother, the daughter of a convicted official, died young and left her with no one to rely on. Her stepmother saw her as a thorn in her side and tormented her for ten years. Everyone in the household treated her as a useless fool they could beat and abuse at will.

From the start, she was trapped in a death sentence: her eldest legitimate brother was found dead in her courtyard, with witnesses and evidence against her. Her stepmother wanted to drown her in a pond as punishment.

Everyone expected the foolish concubine-born daughter to wail and beg for mercy. Instead, she looked up, her eyes no longer timid, but utterly calm and sharp.

“He wasn't strangled. He died of poison. If you want the truth, let me examine the body.”

Those mad words tore through the fog surrounding a blood-soaked murder in the inner household.

She used modified silver needles to test for poison, determined the time of death from rigor mortis and lividity, and revealed scrubbed-away bloodstains with rice vinegar and alum. With her modern forensic expertise, she cleared the innocent and caught the real killer.

To survive in this man-eating world of feudal morality, she kept up her fool's disguise and concealed her sharp edge. Using the funeral parlor as her base and corpses as witnesses, she solved one buried case after another.

A concubine falsely accused and murdered, an official who died suddenly, missing children, a family wiped out to the last member... No truth concealed by power or superstition could escape her scalpel.

She had only wanted to protect herself and live in peace, but she accidentally stumbled upon a shocking bloody case at court. She also met Xiao Che, the “Living King of Hell,” who, like her, concealed a host of secrets.

He was the Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, feared by officials throughout the land, as well as a deposed crown prince living under an assumed name. He bore a deep blood feud for his mother's family, slaughtered to the last.

He saw through her feigned foolishness at a glance, and she understood him at a glance