The Underworld Verdict

The Underworld Verdict is a long supernatural mystery novel by the web author Gu Cheng Zi Cao. The story begins in the twentieth year of the Shaoxing era of the Southern Song, when strange events occur in Chen Family Village at the foot of Ziyun Mountain outside Lin'an: Chen Youfu, already past fifty, has a son in his old age, and uncanny phenomena follow; fortunately the gods protect the child, and a Daoist master bestows on him the name Chen Mengsheng. Only at twenty does the boy learn that he is deeply bound to the reincarnation of Yin Hong and the "Three-Life Tribulation," and that he is fated to judge the living and the dead. The novel combines folk legends of underworld judges with case-file storytelling, casting its protagonist as an underworld magistrate who takes up his brush in the world of the living: a rich man's daughter has her eyes gouged out, an honest official is dismembered after death, a ferry boat is scuttled on the river... Wronged souls with no one to hear their pleas linger in the mortal world and wreak havoc. Chen Mengsheng accepts their petitions, and whether the grievance arose in life or the bullying came after death, right and wrong are settled with a single stroke of the vermilion brush. The book unfolds in unit cases across several volumes, including "The Three-Life Tribulation," "Record of Vindication," "The Nine-Lives Case," "Chart of Blood and Bone," and "The Human Road." The thorniest matter is a case whose defendant is a celestial power who benefits all living beings, bringing law and feeling, heavenly rule and human heart into direct conflict, and forcing the protagonist to choose between judging others and judging himself. The book runs about 1.13 million characters, in a style closer to traditional tales of the strange and case-file mystery; the cases escalate layer by layer while the main thread always revolves around the protagonist's three-life karma.