In the twelfth lunar month of the seventeenth year of Yongchang, Pei Xingjian, a young minister of Dali Temple, married Jiang Zhiyi, a merchant girl from Yangzhou, on the order of his mother. No one in the capital understands why the dignified third son of the Marquis and the emperor's favorite married a niece who sells pickles in the alleys of Dongcheng? No one knew that this marriage was a chess game that the two of them had been hiding for eight years from the beginning. Pei Xingjian is the cold-faced King of Hell in Dali Temple. For twenty years he only recognized corpses but not people. Master Shen Heting had his whole family executed eight years ago for collaborating with the enemy and treason. He searched for eight years but could not find any evidence to reverse the case - until a "suicided" corpse appeared with wrong strangulation marks. Jiang Zhiyi is the daughter of a criminal minister. Her father, Jiang Wenyuan, was falsely accused of embezzling money to build embankments and was beheaded in prison. At the age of twelve, she became a disciple of the old widower Yu, and learned autopsy, drug identification, and tracking in a ruined temple. After eight years of secret investigation, she identified the real mastermind behind the scenes - the princeling. She had only one purpose in marrying into the Hou family: to use Pei Xingjian's help to overturn her father's case. Two people, each bearing blood debts, met head-on in the same dark alley. A lantern, a corpse, a mark of strangulation, a piece of osmanthus petal - it can never stop from now on. From Zhao Wenyuan's study to the farm in the west of Beijing, from the old Huaihe case to the prince's private soldiers, they used the language of corpses to pry open the heaviest door in the Liang Dynasty.
Intention: "The truth can be buried, but it will not be eliminated." This is not a simple revenge story, nor is it a sweet love affair. Its core idea is - the voice of the silent. Jiang Zhiyi's father was an unknown minor official. After his unjust death, there was not even a piece of redressal file. Pei Xingjian's master was a famous official of his generation, but he was labeled "treason" after his death. Those who are dead, buried, and unable to speak, their grievances have never disappeared, they just need two people who are willing to lie on the ground and listen - one is the coroner who does the autopsy, and the other is the Shaoqing who investigates the case. The values of the whole book point to: "The widow listens to the last words of the corpse, and the judge listens to the last word of the deceased. They do not speak, but their bodies do not lie." And the power of inheritance - Uncle Yu's notes were passed to Jiang Zhiyi, and Shen Heting's code of conduct was left on the wall of the signing room. Generation after generation, people described and picked it up, and the fire will never be extinguished.