Reborn in 2000: Solving Cold Cases at the Municipal Police Bureau

[Absurdist, Anti-Trope Crime-Solving + Rebirth in a Bygone Era]

Veteran detective Lu Chuan died in the line of duty. He closed his eyes, then opened them to find himself back at the turn of the millennium.

No surveillance network, no cameras, no DNA identification, no big-data tracing.

Old fans spun uselessly, old case files were pored over in vain. Solving cases meant pounding the pavement and questioning people until your mouth went dry.

At least he carried twenty years of criminal investigation experience in his heart, and the five senses he had honed were almost supernaturally sharp. He could pick out a killer's trembling voice amid the frogs' croaking, and spot buried old grudges beneath the sand. He could sketch a profile from microexpressions at the drop of a hat, and reconstruct a crime scene on the fly.

A corpse floating in a dry river, bones hidden in a deserted well,

A secret scheme to conceive a child, a fetus secretly destroyed with drugs,

A pair of river pirates, suspicions of a whole family murdered,

Bones butchered on the black market, old files buried and forgotten.

Cases nested within cases, mysteries within mysteries. Small cases led to big ones, and hidden threads wove a net that closed in on the Golden Triangle's drug lord, who had entrenched himself along the border and stained Lu Chuan's hands with blood in his previous life. Hide as deep as you like, run as far as you can: debts of blood must be repaid! So tell me, is that head of yours fresh?