Shen Qingwu was driven out of the Shen family at the age of eight. Ten years later, she returned with a bronze token.
Her father had been a coroner at the Judicial Review Office. He died in prison ten years ago, and the case file said he had “died suddenly of heart disease.” She didn't believe it.
On her first night back at the residence, she pried half a farewell letter from a servant's hand. On the second night, she dug a skeleton out of a dry well in her own backyard. Two loops of wire were wrapped around its neck. It was her father.
Her second uncle said a servant had fallen into the well. The second branch of the family said there was no point reopening a case over the dead. The Judicial Review Office said the case had been closed for ten years.
She slapped the bronze token down on the table.
“I'm his daughter. I'll examine the body.”
From the burial grounds to the apothecary, from the dry well to the ancestral grave, she went through the old records from ten years ago, line by line. Only when she reached the end did she learn the truth: her father hadn't been framed. He had found something he shouldn't have, and someone had slowly tortured him to death, inch by inch.
The hand that had killed him was now reaching for her.
