Three Thousand Pursuits

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Cheng Qiyuan has a secret: he has lived through the same day three thousand times.

With every loop, he retains all his memories, while his body resets to its original state. He uses this ability to solve cases, save people, and accumulate knowledge, but there is one thing he can never change: no matter how many times he loops, some people cannot be saved.

While investigating a silk-related murder, he discovers that the killer seems to know the rules of time reversal, too. The two contend across overlapping timelines, and every rescue attempt that starts over undermines the alibis established before. Then he discovers that the killer is none other than himself: another version of him, split off during three thousand loops.

There are four people around him: Cheng Tianyou, Qi Mingwei, Yuan Zhiyuan, and Zang Yungui. Each of them is connected by a thread to the same truth. That truth is hidden in seven industries: silk, tea, Chinese medicine, porcelain, brewing, arts and crafts, and the Four Treasures of the Study. Each industry hides a spoke, and thirty spokes come together to form a hub. The hub is hollow. Inside the hollow, a heart is beating.

Eighty-one chapters, eighty-one cases. Each case reveals a layer of truth, and each layer weaves into a web. At its center is him.

He says, "Time cannot be reversed. But the human heart can."

This is a story about time, fate, and redemption. A detective spends three thousand loops pursuing the real culprit, only to discover in the end that the culprit is not a person, but an obsession with justice.