Forensic examiner Shen Mo woke up to find himself lying in the morgue of the imperial prison during the Hongwu reign of the Great Ming.
All around him were icy corpses. Outside the door stood Embroidered Uniform Guards carrying their embroidered spring knives. He had become the lowest of the low, a coroner awaiting punishment in the imperial prison. At any moment, they might use him as a pawn and kill him without a sound in this foul-smelling morgue.
That very night, the corpse of an official who had supposedly "died suddenly of illness" was brought in. The guards forced him to write the four characters for "died suddenly of illness" to close the case. But the moment he laid his hands on the corpse, he saw what no one else could: poison in the dead man's throat, a needle at the back of his neck, and an injustice that lingered beneath his fingernails.
Speak the truth, and he would die. Keep silent, and he would be the next one lying on the autopsy table.
Shen Mo had no choice but to use his hands, trained to examine corpses, to translate the dead's words for the living, one sentence at a time, and to dig out the hidden hands lurking deep within the imperial court, one by one. His examinations led him to the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guards, and his investigations took him into the files concerning the heir to the throne. Beneath the Hongwu sky, every corpse was part of a scheme.
He started in the lowliest coroner's room, wanting only to stay alive. Yet step by step, he became the examiner no one dared underestimate in this court that devoured its own.
