Lu Chang'an woke up because of the cold.
It wasn't like the winter wind back home. The cold crawled through his thin prison clothes, wormed into his ribs, and carried the smells of damp, old blood, and the musty stench of sewer water. He opened his eyes to a pitch-black stone wall. An oil lamp hung on it, its flame so weak it couldn't properly illuminate even a hand.
A drop of water fell onto his forehead.
Drip.
Lu Chang'an blinked.
He wanted to wipe it away, but a sharp pain immediately shot through his wrists. Both hands were locked in iron cuffs. His ankles were heavy too, iron chains dragging across the stone floor with a dry clink.
His head throbbed as if someone had stuffed an entire dictionary inside it and then brought down a hammer.
Strange memories flooded in.
Great Qian.
The capital.
The Lu family.
The Ministry of War had lost its military bullion. The Lu family had been responsible for transporting it. The silver in the storage vault had turned into a pile of cheap alloy. The ledgers clearly recorded the Lu family as the recipient. The evidence was airtight. The entire household had been thrown into death row.
Beheading in three days.
Lu Chang'an braced himself against the floor and sat up. He looked around, his eyes gradually adjusting to the darkness.
The cell was roughly two zhang wide. Moss covered the stone walls. Rotten straw was mixed into the earthen floor. In the corner sat a chipped porcelain bowl filled with cloudy water covered in a greasy film. The iron bars in front of him were as thick as his wrist, with a dark brown smear stuck to them. Mud or blood—he couldn't tell which.
Voices echoed from the corridor outside.
Someone was crying.
Someone was begging.
Farther away, an elderly voice muttered prayers, repeating the same line until it went hoarse. Then a heavy impact rang out. The crying stopped at once.
Death row wasn't like the prison in Lu Chang'an's imagination.
There was no constant screaming. This place was much quieter. So quiet that every sound seemed soaked in cold water, slowly rising out of the darkness.
He sat motionless for a long while.
If this was a dream, someone had gone way overboard on the set dressing.
Lu Chang'an lowered his head and examined the unfamiliar hands. His fingers were long and slender, his palms covered in thin calluses. They weren't the hands of the criminal investigator he had once used to flip through case files, hold a pen, and wear examination gloves.
He raised a hand and touched his face.
The face was younger. The jawbone was different. Even the small scar at his temple wasn't his.
World-hopping.
A term he'd once used to tease his friends after absurdly long shifts.
He hadn't expected to take it this far.
Lu Chang'an laughed, but the sound quickly dried up in his throat. He remembered where he was now.
Death row.
His family had been framed.
Three days until beheading.
This was no time to study the biology of his new body.
The cell across from him flew open. A jailer carrying a lamp walked over. A large patch of pockmarks covered his left cheek, making his smile look vicious.
“You're awake?”
Lu Chang'an looked at him.
“Are you a doctor?”
The jailer frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing. What year is it?”
“Great Qian, year seventeen.”
“The location?”
“The capital.”
“What am I imprisoned for?”
The jailer sneered.
“Your entire Lu family embezzled the Ministry of War's military bullion. You're all about to die, and you're still playing dumb?”
Lu Chang'an didn't answer.
The jailer set a bowl of gruel on the floor, then looked at him with the amused interest of someone standing outside a well and watching another person fall in.
“Execution is in three days. Eat while you can.”
“Can I appeal?”
“You think this is a market?”
“No. At least at a market, someone lets you haggle.”
The jailer bared his teeth.
“Cut the crap.”
“I'm just clarifying the procedure. It's a human life, after all, not a food delivery sent to the wrong address.”
The man gave the bowl a light kick and walked away.
Lu Chang'an stared at the cold gruel without touching it.
He forced himself to stay calm.
Panic wouldn't help. In an investigation, the first moment was always the most important: preserve the scene, establish the facts, and distinguish truth from testimony.
He began examining his body.
There were no life-threatening wounds. His wrists were bruised from the cuffs. His left shoulder hurt, but it was muscular pain. There was a little black dust beneath his fingernails. His clothes smelled of smoke and metal. There was no trace of alcohol, anesthetic, or potent herbs.
Then he examined the cell.
The outer lock was intact. There were no saw marks on the iron bars. The dirt held only his footprints and the jailer's. The blood on the bars had dried long ago and had nothing to do with him.
Lu Chang'an sat down and drew three lines in the dust with his finger.
One: he had world-hopped.
Two: his family had been convicted of stealing military bullion.
Three: three days remained before his death.
There were too few facts.
But every case had a starting point.
He needed to see the silver.
The silver in the evidence vault, the silver transported by the Lu family, the delivery ledgers, the seals. One mismatch was all it would take to create a crack in the case.
The cell door opened again.
The pockmarked jailer turned and said:
“Someone from the Lu family wants to see you.”
Lu Chang'an stood.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
A flicker of memory suddenly flashed through his mind. A silver-haired man with a straight back, wearing official robes stripped of their jade belt. A hand resting on his shoulder since childhood. A calm voice telling him not to chase fame and fortune, only to be an upright man.
Lu Chang'an stepped out of the cell.
The death row corridor stretched endlessly. Dark iron-barred cells lined both sides. A hand reached out from one cell, dirty nails trembling as they clutched the bars. A hoarse voice begged for water. The jailer walked past without even looking.
The interrogation room was at the end of the corridor.
His father was sitting inside.
He was much older than in the memories. His silver hair was disheveled, the corners of his lips dry and cracked, and whip marks still showed on his neck. But his back remained straight.
When he saw Lu Chang'an, he froze slightly.
“Chang'an?”
“It's me.”
Two simple words, yet saying them made his chest grow heavy.
This man wasn't his biological father on Earth. But the memories in this body had accepted him as their father. Feelings didn't need identification papers. They came before reason, leaving no time to defend against them.
His father looked at the iron cuffs on his hands, his voice turning hoarse.
“You shouldn't have woken up.”
“I regret it a little myself. Once I woke up, I found out the whole family was about to be processed as a package deal.”
“This is no time for jokes.”
“I know.”
Lu Chang'an pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Tell me everything from the beginning.”
The old man studied him for a long time, seeming to notice something different in his son's eyes.
“Three months ago, the Ministry of War ordered the Lu family to transport thirty chests of military bullion from a mine in the north back to the capital. There were soldiers escorting the convoy, and the seals remained intact. When we reached the Ministry of War's vault, their people inspected and accepted the cargo, signed for it, and put the silver into storage.”
“And then they discovered the silver was missing?”
“Seven days later. The thirty chests of silver had become adulterated silver. The ledgers clearly stated that the escorts had switched it on the road.”
“Were the seals opened?”
“No.”
“No signs of tampering?”
“None.”
“Then what was the evidence based on?”
His father fell silent.
Lu Chang'an understood.
“The silver in the vault was considered the silver we delivered simply because the ledgers said so?”
“There was also the testimony of the inspector.”
“Who?”
“Chen Kai, a senior clerk of the Ministry of War.”
Lu Chang'an committed the name to memory.
“What did he say?”
“He said that when the chests were opened, the silver was already fake. The Lu family's escorts had a spare key.”
“Did they?”
“We had a key. But it never left my hands.”
“Did you produce it?”
“It was confiscated.”
“The chest seals?”
“Those were confiscated too.”
Lu Chang'an lowered his head and thought.
Thirty chests of silver. A spare key. Seals. Ledgers. Testimony.
Everything pointed to the Lu family.
It was too neat.
A perfect crime scene usually wasn't one without clues. It was one that had been cleaned up.
“Do you know what the silver in the vault looked like?”
“I only saw it briefly.”
“Anything unusual?”
His father frowned.
“The silver was a little dark. Some of the ingots had black marks on the bottom.”
“Black marks?”
“Like scorch marks.”
Lu Chang'an raised his head.
“Did the silver have a smell?”
“No.”
“What about the chests?”
“They smelled of tung oil, along with a sharp metallic odor.”
A sharp metallic odor.
If real silver had been remelted, its surface would show signs of oxidation depending on the impurities. If fake silver had a copper core, melting it under unsuitable conditions would leave behind copper oxide, black or green in color. A weak acid could be used to test it.
The problem was that there was no laboratory here.
But death row had plenty of useful things.
Kitchen ash. Vinegar. Salt. Oil. Urine. Metal.
Chemistry had never required a clean room. All it needed was enough patience and someone who knew how to look.
“Father.”
“Yes?”
“If I prove that the silver in the vault is fake, can you confirm that the silver delivered by the Lu family wasn't the same silver?”
His father looked at him, his eyes filled with both hope and pain.
“What are you planning to do?”
“Investigate.”
“You're in death row.”
“Then I'll investigate from death row.”
“You only have three days left.”
“Three days is enough to crack a case. Assuming the culprit doesn't know how to work overtime.”
His father laughed, the raspy sound quickly turning into a cough.
Lu Chang'an waited for him to recover, then said:
“I need to see the evidence.”
“Impossible.”
“Then I need to see the delivery ledgers.”
“Also impossible.”
“I need to meet Chen Kai.”
“Even more impossible.”
Lu Chang'an leaned back.
“The court sure is efficient. Anything useful gets locked up, while anything useless gets taken out for beheading.”
His father stared at him for a long time.
“You've changed.”
“I almost died. Change is a normal reaction.”
“Are you still afraid?”
Lu Chang'an fell silent.
Yes.
He was afraid of dying. Afraid of being dragged to the execution grounds, afraid of the blade coming down, afraid that the memories he'd just received would become an ending that wasn't worth a damn.
But the fear had passed its first wave. Once a person knew what he was afraid of, he could begin calculating.
“Yes,” he said. “But I don't plan to let fear do the culprit's job for him.”
His father grasped his hand through the gap in the cuffs.
“Chang'an, if it can't be done, let it go. Stop fighting. The Lu family can't beat the court.”
Lu Chang'an looked at the man's hands, covered in whip marks.
“Father, an innocent man shouldn't learn how to die obediently.”
Outside the door, the pockmarked jailer tapped his blade against the bars.
“Time's up!”
His father released his hand.
Lu Chang'an stood and turned toward the door, then stopped.
“Father.”
“Yes?”
“Real silver has a cold gleam. No matter how beautifully fake silver is plated, it will reveal the core beneath.”
His father didn't understand.
But Lu Chang'an did.
The same was true of lies.
No matter how tightly they were arranged, they still had to have a core. Find the right spot, and the whole shell would peel away.
He returned to his cell.
Before the iron door closed, the pockmarked jailer suddenly asked:
“Do you really have a way to save the entire Lu family?”
Lu Chang'an turned his head.
“I don't know.”
“Then why keep trying?”
“Because I haven't paid for my coffin yet.”
The jailer frowned.
Lu Chang'an sat down beside the bowl of cold gruel and watched the flickering oil lamp reflected in the water.
“Besides,” he said, “I hate it when someone else fakes a crime scene and then makes me take the blame.”
The iron door closed.
Death row sank into darkness.
But for the first time since waking up, Lu Chang'an no longer saw the darkness ahead as a death drawing near.
He saw the outlines of the case.
And somewhere out there, someone had replaced real silver with fake silver, altered the ledgers, bought testimony, and shoved the entire Lu family into the abyss.
That person thought death row was the end.
Lu Chang'an propped his chin on his hand and smiled faintly.
“You picked the wrong person to frame.”