During the Kaixi era of the Northern Song, female coroner Gu Qingyi takes her deceased elder brother's place in the Judicial Review Bureau. Thanks to her remarkable skill at examining injuries through steamed bones, she becomes an indispensable assistant to Cui Heng, Assistant Minister of the Court of Judicial Review.
A string of officials dying suddenly exposes a shocking conspiracy tied to the struggle between the old and new factions. A cinnabar mole behind a victim's ear, secret Western Xia writing hidden inside a jade-glazed candlestick, a private salt-smuggling network monopolized by imperial merchants... Beneath layers of fog, Gu Qingyi discovers that her own origins are closely bound up with the heart of the case.
The only person she can trust is Assistant Minister Cui, who has no sense of taste but is a master of tea ceremony, even though his left hand conceals a dark past known to no one.
Theme: The truth will not stay silent, even when buried for a thousand years
