On the night of the Shangyuan Festival, a foreign monk gorges himself to death in public, with honey syrup pouring from his seven orifices.
Shen Jingwu, the daughter of a coroner, performs an autopsy and discovers the truth: he did not die from overeating. Someone used a glutton's poison feast to stage a murder plot of shocking proportions!
But officials at the Court of Judicial Review, eager to seize power, falsify the autopsy report and order her to keep quiet.
Shen Jingwu sneers. "I'm not afraid of corpses, and I'm certainly not afraid of living wolves."
Just as she prepares to file a complaint alone, a flamboyant wastrel sweeps aside the curtain and crouches on the ground to examine the corpse.
"Go on with the examination. This heir will hold the lantern for you."
Di Jingbin, the disgraced son of Di Renjie, is seen by outsiders as a dissolute nepo baby, yet he always manages to pinpoint the mystery behind a death with a single remark.
In front of everyone, he wraps an arm around her waist and laughs softly. "I owed you a hug in my last life. I have to repay you in this one."
But she clearly remembers never having met him.
As the autopsies go deeper, poisoned delicacies from the mountains, deadly candied fruit, and a cult that worships starving ghosts all come to light. Behind it all is Prince Yi of the imperial clan, using living people to refine poison and weaving a web that ensnares the entire court.
Shen Jingwu is framed and imprisoned time and again, hunted down and silenced, yet with her hands devoted to clearing the wrongfully accused, she digs irrefutable evidence out of the bones.
And Di Jingbin's true identity turns out to be a hidden piece on the board, reborn with memories of his past life. Every step he takes toward her is a struggle between revenge and deep affection.
"You say you were reborn? Then why, after examining a thousand skeletons, can I not tell whether a single word of that is true?"
When the poison feast is consumed by flames and the court is thrown into turmoil, they discover that the deadliest poison is not a drug, but the human heart.
Ancient mystery x forensic autopsies x reborn power struggles: Watch a sharp-tongued coroner and a fake wastrel heir join forces to dissect the Tang dynasty's darkest and most sinister gluttonous conspiracy.
