The Record of Vindication (Mystery)

My next novel will be The Strange Cases of Chang'an. Please add it to your reading list! My completed novel The Astonishing Forensic Detective is available in my author page.

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"The birthday gift he gave her buried her entire family."

At the age of ten, Shen Zhinian received a birthday gift from her childhood friend, Gu Xici. She had no idea it concealed a death warrant: the Duke of Shen's family was accused of treason, and the evidence was hidden in her birthday box.

An imperial decree came down, and her entire family was destroyed. The men were beheaded, and the women exiled.

The day blood stained the main street, she watched helplessly as the heads of her father and brothers rolled into the mud. On the road to exile, the women were humiliated and died one after another. Her mother died of illness in her arms. She was abandoned in the wilderness, barely alive...

Eight years later, she returned, remade from the bones up and bathed in blood.

A wandering martial artist gave her a new life, teaching her martial arts and medicine, as well as the art of dissecting bodies and solving cases.

From then on, Chang'an had a cold-faced female coroner: Shen Qingchen.

In the Cat-Faced Groom case, she found a poisoned needle in the groom's throat.

In the Yong'an Canal dismemberment case, she pieced together the victim's final words.

In the Poisonous Mushroom murder series, she saw through the killer's murderous scheme disguised as love...

One bizarre case after another led her to the position of Junior Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, making her the first woman in history to oversee criminal justice.

But no one knew she had searched through mountains of corpses and seas of blood only to uncover the truth of that long-ago tragedy...

"Gu Xici, why did you give me a debt of blood against my whole family?"

The refined young man of the past was now the powerful Chief Minister of the Court of Judicial Review. He pressed a sword to his chest and let her stab him, a smile spreading through his eyes. "If my life can satisfy your hatred, then take it."

She sneered, lowered her sword, and turned to leave.

But she did not know...

An ordinary person's heart is on the left, but his was on the right.

That day, what she stabbed had never been his life, but the thing he had hidden for eight years...

"His true feelings."

"Only after she had examined every wronged corpse under heaven did she realize that the heart most in need of examination was his."

[Gentle, cold-blooded female official x ruthless, devoted powerbroker | Childhood friends turned enemies x mutual redemption]

"I'll use a wrongful conviction as my game board, wait for you to enter the game, and have you sentence me to a lifetime."

[Reader's guide]

1. The setting is entirely fictional, with no specific dynasty in mind. Please don't nitpick the historical details.

2. The story is a slow burn, focused primarily on solving cases, with the romance as a secondary storyline.

3. Sweet romance, devoted to each other, happy ending. The male lead did not kill the female lead's family; there are hidden circumstances.

4. The autopsy methods mentioned in the story are based on research.

5. The heights mentioned in the story are based on one chi being about 23.4 centimeters.

Theme: Good and evil are always repaid in the end