Sugar on the Bone

Modern forensic examiner Xie Guyin transmigrates into the Great Zhou Dynasty as a “corpse seamstress,” a lowly woman who grooms and applies makeup to the dead. On her first night, she feels the neck vertebrae of a “suicide” bride and finds the third spinous process displaced. The bride wasn’t hanged. Someone broke her neck, then strung her up.

She reports it to the authorities and gets twenty strokes of the cane. She reports it again and gets thrown into death row.

Cen Zhaoye, commander of the Imperial City Division, is a madman who fought his way out of the secret guard camp. His hands are soaked in blood, yet he offers her a razor. “You know how to examine bones? Come with me. If your findings are wrong, I’ll take your bones apart.”

She examines bones, and he protects her. From death row to the imperial city, from corpse seamstress to a third-rank forensic examiner’s wife.

She teaches him that bones are more honest than the living. He teaches her that this world is harder than bones.

A palace bloodbath from twenty years ago, the late emperor’s edict hidden in a prince’s bones, and the revelation that the current emperor has no imperial blood… She uncovers the truth, and he draws his blade for her.

But on the day the truth comes to light, she opens the Bone Examination Hall to teach women across the land how to examine corpses. He resigns and moves in next door, climbing over the wall every day to bring her osmanthus cakes.

“Cen Zhaoye, what do you mean by that?”

“Nothing in particular. I resigned, and I had nowhere else to go.”

Bones grow old, but the truth does not. People change, but some keep examining, and others keep protecting.

Does that count as getting together? Sure. And not really.