Supernatural Cold Cases

On his first day shadowing the team, Jiang Shu, a rookie detective with the Lintuo County Criminal Investigation Brigade, runs into something sinister: a drowned man is pulled from the Tuo River, but there is no water in his lungs, and his toes point toward the shore. Cen Shouyi, the veteran coroner assigned to train him, leaves him with only one warning: “Don't touch this case.” That night, Cen goes missing. The only thing left in the duty room is a note: If you find a third person, stop. Jiang Shu doesn't stop. He combs through twenty years of drowning case files and finds two identical “accidents”: during the flood season, no water in the lungs, toes pointing toward shore, and a red cord bearing the character for “water” clutched in the palm. All three victims were aboard the same cargo ship, Qinghang 037, twenty-seven years ago. The ship sank at Laoya Shoal in 1997, carrying a load of coffins with no shipping manifest. The coffins came ashore; the debt fell upon the living. Ten were returned to the water, one to the living. The debt begins to be repaid, one person at a time, for the one who vanished twenty-seven years ago. Other people solve cases with evidence. Jiang Shu first has to learn the rules: don't use a knife during a thunderstorm; if the toes point toward shore, don't meet the eyes; if something sounds beneath the hull, leave the boat on a flood night. Each rule in this set of autopsy protocols passed down from his master's master has a life lying behind it, and every time he follows one, he must pay a price. Only when the clues point to the most respectable family in the county does Jiang Shu understand: his master didn't disappear. He hid himself away, waiting for someone brave enough to hear the rest of the rules. The supernatural is always separated from us by a thin sheet of paper. The human heart is the real deep water. This is the story of a young man who refuses to believe in the supernatural, takes over from his missing master, and uses a deadly set of rules to seek justice for the dead along both banks of the Tuo River.