Lin Yan, a trace examiner with the criminal investigation squad, spent three years pursuing the “Cinnabar Mark” serial murder case. In the end, he fell from a building along with the killer. When he woke, he had become a timid coroner in the Great Jing capital whom everyone looked down on.
Vengeful ghosts in mass graves, a red-clad water ghost in an ancient well, a withered hand delivering divine punishment in a Buddhist hall, a bride vanishing from her sedan chair... Ten bizarre cases, blamed by the people on ghosts and spirits, were repeatedly closed in haste amid public fear and silence.
Lin Yan refuses to believe in the supernatural.
Rigor mortis reveals the time of death, ligature marks establish the cause of death, traces narrow down the suspects, and psychological profiling sketches the perpetrator. Without a forensic lab or DNA technology, he uses his hands and eyes to rip away layers of folk superstition and make the dead speak.
Yet in a hidden corner of every case, the same familiar mark appears: three lines stamped in cinnabar, identical in every detail to the signature of the serial killer he pursued for three years.
Murder by proxy, staged hauntings: the ten bloody cases are nothing but a challenge thrown down by his adversary. At the bottom of the ancient well, in the rafters of the Buddhist hall, beneath the bridal sedan, behind the shadow puppets... The eyes lurking in the dark have never left him, not since the day he arrived in this world.
Ghosts and gods are easy to expose. The human heart is harder to fathom.
The buried injustices await their day in the light. This cross-world hunt for a killer has only just begun.
