Shen Huan, a modern forensic pathologist, wakes up in the late Jiajing era as a low-ranking Imperial Guard from a despised social class. In this treacherous palace, where corrupt eunuchs hold sway, he harbors a secret he can tell no one: at midnight each night, he can speak with the dead at a crime scene for one minute.
He had hoped to use this gift to survive between the cracks and clear his father’s name. But the whisper of a skeleton in the imperial prison drags him into an even deeper maelstrom. Combining modern analysis of skeletal injuries with fragments of clues from the dead, he stages a “verdict from the bones” in court. His irrefutable forensic logic brings the real culprit to justice, but also draws him into the clutches of a cult called the Red Lotus Society.
After that, Shen Huan is swept into the even more uncanny “Ghosts of the Imperial Examinations” case. The exam hall is haunted, and candidates are dying one after another. As he investigates a meticulously planned cheating scheme, he discovers that every clue points to an even more deranged goal of the Red Lotus Society: to stage a “heaven-sent punishment” at the imperial ceremony, then assassinate the emperor and seize the throne!
As the conspiracy nears its climax, the enemy uses sorcery to disrupt the balance between yin and yang, rendering Shen Huan’s “whispers of the dead” completely useless. With no testimony from the dead to rely on, all he has left is his modern forensic mind. In the presence of the emperor and his ministers, he must use a pinch of unusual gunpowder left at the scene, a hidden trail of financial transactions, and a chain of airtight behavioral logic to deliver a verdict without witnesses. With pure reason, he will tear away the mask of superstition covering imperial power.
By night, he patrols in his embroidered uniform; by day, he solves cases with the dead. He speaks for the silent, using logic as his blade to cut through the most baffling mysteries.
