The Mortal's Path to Immortality: Judge of Karma

Qin Shouyi, Qingyang County's veteran coroner, spent his life upholding the belief that “justice for the dead is the conscience of the living.” In the end, he was framed and murdered for uncovering the dark truth behind a wicked soul-refining art. He wasn't even given a proper gravestone. On the seventh night after his father's death, Qin Yuan went to a mass grave and found a black, thread-bound book in the cracked earth of his father's grave: a surviving fragment of the Underworld's Book of Life and Death, and a token of the Judge's reincarnation.

The book reveals the good and evil karma of all living beings, marked in red for evil and white for good. By collecting evil karma, Qin Yuan can turn it into cultivation; by accumulating good karma, he can exchange it for blessings and divine abilities. From then on, wearing his father's faded blue coroner's uniform as armor and wielding the plain iron knife his father left him as a pen, Qin Yuan sets out to “weigh karma and judge all the wickedness of the mortal world.”

In the end, Qin Yuan travels to the underworld to face King Yama's test and officially takes his place as a Judge. He does not stop at revenge. Carrying the Book of Karma, he walks between the realms of yin and yang, continuing to judge injustice and evil in the human world. Amid the satisfying revenge and courtroom justice, the story holds fast to its central belief that “justice will never be absent, and good and evil will always meet their due.” It portrays an ordinary man who serves as a judge, carrying a book in his hand and compassion in his heart. He is no lofty deity, just an ordinary person who speaks for the dead and seeks justice for the living.