As the synopsis says, this is one long difficult intertwined case between the theft of $500k government silver and an unknown skeleton washed out by the recent flooding that bears the heir apparent’s distinctive 9 dragon jade pendant around its neck. There is a forebearing that eventual further investigation has the potential to disrupt the entire late southern Song Dynasty. 28 years prior to the start of this season, the current emperor zhao Hong was brought into the palace to be one of several of the then emperor’s “sons” as he had not one biological son. The heir apparent of the time, zhao yang, was in a furious embroil with the then treacherous king-maker prime minister shi kaiyuan who single handedly controlled the emperor as his puppet. Of course the heir apparent was nullified and demoted to king of ji, and banished to hu prefecture. As the king-maker, he made the current emperor listed as heir apparent by altering the will of heaven. But because this prime minister wasn’t satisfied with his legacy as everyone at court deeply despised him, he purposely enacted a terrible fire that engulfed the king’s residence to force him to go into hiding at the Buddhist temple in the sky pavilion mountain. He also stole away the will to prevent anyone from taking a close look after the ascension ceremony. Soon after the pm died and everyone at court thought his tyranny had ended as he had no publicly acknowledge relatives. He then had his carefully hidden from public eyes nephew also create a fire to destroy his identity trail as shi tianlai and establish his new identity as wu de. Wu de took ahold of this will and used it to blackmail the current emperor to become a first rank official. But all of these secrets are soon to be imminently revealed one by one by none other than song ci, a most upright 4th rank official who was recalled back to his position.