[Strong Female Lead + Career-Focused + Political Intrigue + Solving Cases + Revenge + No Fixed Couple]
(Not a mindless wish-fulfillment story. The outline spans 200,000 words, with a complex plot and a large cast. Individual cases connect to the main storyline. The heroine begins as an unofficial coroner and gradually becomes caught in the whirlpool of court politics. After her revenge, she delves further into her career and drives institutional reform. This story focuses on plot and career development, so readers who aren't looking for that should steer clear.)
In the Great Zhou Dynasty, coroners are classified as lowborn, and the status is hereditary and impossible to escape.
A woman examining corpses? Unthinkable.
But Su Heng refuses to accept that.
Her father, Su Qian, was once the Ministry of Justice's chief coroner. Ten years ago, after discovering the truth about Censor Zhou Yan's poisoning, he was framed by Grand Tutor Wei Chong for "mishandling an examination." He was sentenced to exile and then secretly imprisoned. Her mother, Madam Liu, fell gravely ill from grief, and on her deathbed handed her father's manuscript, The Record of Examining Bones, to her.
From that day on, the world gained a man named "Su Heng."
Disguised as a man, she sneaks into the Ministry of Justice's coroner's office and starts at the bottom as a lowly assistant.
She can examine what others can't. She dares to examine what others won't. For others, an examination ends the case. For her, it's only the beginning.
From a staged-suicide case to a corpse moved after drowning, from an assassination in the silver vault to a series of poison murders, from charred remains in a fire to a bride drowned in a pond, from a plague lockdown to reopening a case in the imperial palace...
Every corpse she examines pushes her further into the whirlpool of power.
At the very center of that whirlpool lie her father's wrongful conviction, her uncle's unjust death, and the eight hundred wronged souls at the bottom of the Yongding River twenty years ago.
--
"Bones can't speak, but they can't lie either."
She came from the mortuary and walked all the way to the Golden Throne Hall, stepping over bones.
--
The heroine has steady hands, a sharp eye, and a ruthless heart.
