The Song Dynasty’s Female Coroner: The Record of Washing Away Wrongs

Song Ciyin, a PhD in forensic anthropology, transmigrates by accident after a research mishap. Her soul lands in the sixth year of Chunyou during the reign of Emperor Lizong of the Southern Song (1246), in the body of Song Ci’s legitimate daughter. Her father, the historical Song Ci who will one day write The Washing Away of Wrongs, is currently serving as a judicial commissioner in Hunan. But after a bizarre murder involving Shi Anzhi, the young son of powerful minister Shi Miyuan, political enemies frame him, and he is about to be escorted to the capital to face charges. To save her father, Song Ciyin disguises herself as a man and enters the forbidding offices of the Court of Judicial Review and the judicial commissioner’s bureau, claiming to be “Song Ci’s last disciple.” Armed with eight centuries’ worth of forensic knowledge, she applies everything from diatom testing to distinguish drowning from postmortem disposal, to estimating the exact time of death from lividity and rigor mortis, to using entomology to determine how long a body has been exposed. Building on the already sophisticated autopsy practices of the Southern Song, she takes on the powerful, prejudice, and crime. From the grand estates of Lin’an to the wild hills and remote graves of Hunan Circuit; from the deadly traps laid by Shi Miyuan’s faction to the turbulent court after Emperor Lizong takes power and launches the Duanping reforms. With the precision of a scalpel, Song Ciyin cuts into every silent corpse and makes it speak its final words. Her greatest weapon is not only modern forensic science, but also one person: her father, Song Ci. With The Washing Away of Wrongs still taking shape, the minds of father and daughter, separated by eight centuries, will write a brilliant new chapter in the judicial history of the Southern Song. “The laws of the Great Song protect all its people, not the private desires of the powerful. Every word in this case file is a final message from the dead.”