The Magistrate's Bane

Qianlong-era Zhejiang, 1786. While upright censor Dou Guangnai battles entrenched corruption, a lowly archive clerk named Wu Qi becomes obsessed with a shadowy vigilante who executes venal officials. Desperate to escape his insignificance, Wu Qi begins to emulate the killings, only to find his memories splintering. As Dou closes in on both graft and murder, Wu Qi can no longer distinguish the idol from the imitator—or reality from delusion. In this John Marrs-inspired psychological thriller, memory itself becomes a lying witness, revealing that every truth is merely a story assembled from fractured shards.