All of Chang’an is talking about how the second daughter of the Zheng family spent eighteen years in a daze, only to wake up one day with her soul finally “whole.”
Before Zheng Ning can figure out how she went from falling into a pond to landing in the sixteenth year of the Zhenguan era, a terrible dream nearly scares her to death.
The good news: she’s from a prominent, powerful family, they’re all happy, and life seems pretty good.
The bad news: in her dream, the Zheng residence is seized and her entire family becomes prisoners, including her.
In the dream, an old man says sarcastically, “You’re cooped up in the inner quarters. How would you know whom to save and whom to guard against?”
Classical Chinese, idle gossip, none of it matters. Staying alive comes first!
She makes her name by solving a lost-silk case that nearly gets an innocent person falsely accused. Then, in a bold moment before the emperor, she asks to observe a trial at the Court of Judicial Review...
From then on, a Zheng family daughter with no official position starts following the investigators around every day. And behind Pei Zhao, the Court of Judicial Review’s assistant minister, there’s now an inescapable nuisance.
One is familiar with modern legal and evidentiary principles, while the other understands criminal procedure, worldly affairs, and human nature. The two couldn’t be more different, yet they work together surprisingly well.
A woman’s body in a well, a bizarre poisoning, identities that are hard to tell apart...
They solve both murders and mysteries of the human heart.
Then, in the spring of the seventeenth year, the dream she has had for so long finally becomes reality, and Zheng Ning understands one thing:
Even in the golden age of Zhenguan, danger lurks everywhere. When some people want to do evil, who needs evidence?
#A quirky, spirited Zheng young lady forced to get her act together x Pei, the assistant minister who seems aloof but is actually socially awkward
Theme: Let evidence speak for itself, and hold the guilty responsible.
