Ming Dynasty | Embroidered Uniform Guard | Mystery and Deduction | Political Intrigue | Dark Humor | Historical Realism
In the twenty-first year of the Jiajing era, Xie Linyuan, a Banner Officer of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, could read a corpse like no other and see through people like a demon.
He could uncover an entire web of corruption from a single body, but he couldn't touch a single person caught in it.
Solve the case? Done. Catch the culprit? Done. And then? The case gets buried, closed, and treated as if it never happened.
His father died in a wrongful conviction. He investigated for twenty years. The Yan faction held all the power, and he endured for twenty years.
Every time he "couldn't touch them," he saved a bullet. Every case he couldn't bring to a close, he added to the ledger.
Then, on the eve of the Yan faction's downfall in the forty-first year of the Jiajing era
He fired twenty years' worth of bullets in a single night.
But at last he realized that even with Yan Song gone and Xu Jie in his place, the machine that devoured people kept turning.
He could solve cases, but he couldn't touch the people behind them. Yet every time he "couldn't touch them" became another bullet.
Solving cases takes brains; taking down the powerful takes timing. The most terrifying person in the world isn't someone clever, but someone clever who knows how to wait.
