County Coroner: I Examine Not Corpses, but Injustice

A corpse washes up on the riverbank, its stiff hand clutching a private seal. In Qingping County, only one person is entitled to use a seal like this: the county magistrate.

The assembled constables are silent with fear. Only the young coroner from the morgue crouches down, runs a fingertip over the ligature marks on the dead man's neck, and murmurs, “He didn't fall into the river by accident. He was murdered.”

Shen Yan has no powerful backer and no scholarly honors. All he has are the hands of an examiner and the skills passed down by his master. Lime reveals old marks wiped from a corpse; maggots can tell exactly how many days someone has been dead. The lividity doesn't match the testimony, and the ligature marks don't match “three days bedridden.” The dead never lie. The living do.

With every case he solves, he inches closer to the truth. With every corpse he examines, he uncovers another layer buried deep beneath the official world.

At last, someone from the prefect's official boat, which has been lingering in the river bend and refusing to come ashore, finally steps into the morgue. Only then does everyone realize that the person in Qingping County they should have underestimated least is this low-ranking clerk who does nothing but examine corpses.