Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I am a coroner, born with Yin-Yang Eyes.

I don’t see ghosts; I see the final image frozen in a dead person’s mind.

This gift has never failed me.

Today, the Prefect sent over the body of a drowned man for me to determine the cause of death. As I grasped his hand, a scene flashed before my eyes: torrential rain, thick mud, and a pair of hands strangling my throat with a death grip.

On those hands was the Jade Bracelet my mother had left me.

And I… I had already died three years ago.

I released the corpse abruptly, my back slamming against the examination table.

Only two oil lamps flickered in the funeral parlor. Wind whistled through the cracks in the broken windows, blowing the white shrouds until they looked like the faces of the living. Xiao Huairen, the head constable, stood at the doorway with his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. “Coroner Su, what’s wrong?” he asked.

My name is Su Wanzhao, and I am the only female coroner in the Qingxi County Office.

To outsiders, I am fearless, my hands are steady, and my heart is colder than my blade. No matter how gruesome the corpse brought before me, I can dissect the chest and abdomen or measure bones and wounds without batting an eye.

But at this moment, as I stared at that male corpse, even my fingertips were trembling.

His face was bloated from the river water, the corners of his mouth were torn, and two purple bruises ringed his neck. Logically, a victim of drowning should have water in the lungs, mud under the fingernails, and foam in the throat. He had none of these.

He had been strangled to death first, then tossed into the river.

That wasn’t what terrified me, though.

What terrified me was that the hands I saw in the vision belonged to me.

To be precise, they belonged to this body.

The wrists were slender, the webbing of the thumbs bore calluses from years of wielding a blade, and there was a cinnabar mole on the inner side of the right pinky finger. I saw that mole every day when I washed my hands.

And the Jade Bracelet worn on that wrist was a memento left to me by my mother.

Three years ago, when I was dug out of my grave, the Jade Bracelet was already gone.

Xiao Huairen took a step closer. “Cause of death?”

I forced myself to grasp the corpse’s cold wrist once more. This time, I did not let my Eyes of Remembrance delve deeper; I simply let the body speak for itself.

“The deceased is male, between twenty-five and thirty years old. There are clear finger-pressure marks on the neck, and the hyoid bone is fractured. The cause of death is mechanical asphyxiation due to manual strangulation. He entered the water after death.”

Xiao Huairen frowned. “Identity?”

I flipped the corpse over and trimmed away the matted hair at the nape of his neck.

There was an old scar there, shaped like a crescent moon.

My vision went dark.

Three years ago, Pei Yan had come to my home on horseback to propose. The bluestone path had been slick after the rain, and he had fallen from his horse, his neck catching on the doorframe. Blood had soaked half his collar. As I bandaged him, he had said with a smile, “Wanzhao, once we are married, you can examine the dead every day, and I will be the one to hand you the scalpel.”

Back then, I wasn’t a coroner yet.

Back then, my name wasn’t Su Wanzhao either.

My name was Jiang Heng.

And Pei Yan was my fiancé, who had been missing for three years.