[Historical Fiction] + [Mystery and Deduction]
In the thirty-fifth year of the First Emperor of Qin, the edict to burn books is issued. I’m a low-ranking clerk earning a stipend of three hundred shi, yet under the merciless Qin laws, I have to find a way to leave ordinary people a chance to live.
Autumn, in the thirty-fifth year of the First Emperor of Qin.
The morning drums sounded three times at the prison office in Yangcheng County. clutching his official token, Li Mo stepped through the county government’s gates.
His first case of the day was the theft of the village head Liu Laosan’s ox.
Everyone said the cattle trader Zheng Tu had done it. The evidence was conclusive, and all that remained was to sign and seal the confession before the case could be closed.
Shao Fu Zhou had already placed the written confession before him. “Xiao Li, sign it. The commandant is waiting.”
Li Mo didn’t take the brush.
He stared at the record of the hoofprints on the bamboo slip, then looked up. “Chief Clerk, there’s something wrong with these hoofprints.”
Shao Fu Zhou’s face darkened. “What’s wrong?”
“Look,” Li Mo said, pointing to the writing on the slip. “The confession says the ox was stolen at midnight, and that its hoofprints headed west. But Zheng Tu’s house is to the east. At midnight, the moon is in the western sky. If the ox went west, its shadow should have fallen to the east, but there are no signs of an ox’s shadow beside the hoofprints at the scene.”
“And what does that prove?”
“It proves,” Li Mo replied softly, each word clear, “that the ox wasn’t stolen at midnight at all. Someone is lying.”
Shao Fu Zhou’s face turned deathly pale.
Li Mo had no idea this was only the first step into a maelstrom.
Nor did he know that seven years later, he would stand amid the ruins of Xianyang, watching a fire that had burned for three months, and personally pass on the spark of Qin law.
The Qin laws spoke softly, yet weighed more than a mountain.
