The Great Chu Executioner: Starting as a Ninth-Rank Official

The Great Chu dynasty has stood for over a century. Twenty years ago, the rebellion of the Four Garrisons churned up the land and rivers, throwing the earth's ley lines and yin energies out of balance. Strange cases broke out constantly in the streets and markets, and ordinary courts of law struggled to adjudicate matters of the netherworld. Shen Zhiwei, a ninth-rank judicial official in Yunzhou, came up through the ranks as a coroner. He is thoroughly versed in autopsy and toxicology, and knows the criminal code and old cases inside out. He has hidden his name and drifted through the lower levels of the judiciary for over a decade, all to uncover the truth behind the extermination of the entire Shen family twelve years ago. He inherits the nine-rank cultivation method of the Observation and Judgment path, in which cultivation and crime-solving nurture each other. The weightier the cases he cracks and the deeper the truths he uncovers, the faster his cultivation advances. At the Qi Refining stage he can discern the lingering aura of the dead; with inner breath he can capture the residual sounds of a scene; with focused spirit he can enter the obsessions of the dead. Each level of cultivation corresponds to a further investigative ability. The heart-digging case at the City God Temple opens up a chain of interlocking mysteries, and the human-skin embroidery of the Splendid Brocade Workshop drags a secret organization into the light: the Scroll-Covering Pavilion. Hidden in the shadows of the world, this organization specializes in tampering with case files, destroying evidence, and manufacturing wrongful convictions, trying to bury every truth that might harm it. From petty cases in prefectures and counties to secret affairs of the capital, from a lowly minor clerk to the master of the realm's judiciary, Shen Zhiwei carries his autopsy kit and threads his way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood. He cracks one long-buried strange case after another, drawing step by step closer to the truth of his family's extermination—and stumbles upon the earth-shaking secret that the Great Chu dynasty has kept for twenty years. Right and wrong, merit and fault, sins rising and sinking. He uses the judgment brush in his hand as a blade, deciding life and death, redressing buried wrongs, and restoring justice to the world. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: The Great Chu Executioner: Starting as a Ninth-Rank Official — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠