Disclaimer: This is a human-powered fan-translation. I don’t own the official translation rights and make no profit out of this. This is the result of a crazy impulse and desire to compare The Imperial Coroner with Bone Painting Coroner (which I DO have official translation permission).
Please do not copy or repost this translation.
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The Imperial Coroner (Madam Coroner) 御赐小仵作(仵作娘子)
Leisurely Lass 清闲丫头
128
978-7-5402-2636-7
Beijing Yanshan Press (2014) 北京燕山出版社
Chapter 1
“Imprisonment is not as serious as a death sentence; A death sentence is not more important than first love; First love is not more important than investigation.”
– Song Ci, Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified. 1
The Capital. Six Doors.
After stepping out from her family home, Chu Chu took the ferry manned by Uncle Four of Chushui Town and got on the donkey cart of rich farmer Brother Luo before she finally left Zizhu County2 behind. After that, she met all sorts of different strangers who gave her directions or even let her hitch a ride. Whenever they asked where she was headed, she would lift her chin, puff out her chest, and proudly announce these four words: The Capital. Six Doors.
She was able to find her way to the capital with just these four words but now that she has reached the capital, she just could not find the Six Doors, no matter how hard she tried.
When the passersby she asked heard the words ‘Six Doors’, they mostly laughed and waved her away; only two people gave her directions, one towards the main gates of the Ministry of Justice, and the other towards Songhe Hall. When she stuck her head in to take a look, she found that it was a medical hall. They must have assumed that there was something wrong with her brain!
Even if they had never heard of it before, didn’t she already describe it very clearly? A building that faces South, with three doorways with double doors, to make a total of six large doors painted with black lacquer. In front of these doors, a pair of stone lions stood guard along with two officers. Above these doors hung a large ebony signboard with the words ‘Six Doors’ painted in gold calligraphy.
She didn’t merely know how the Six Doors looked like but could also unerringly recite the Saga of the Six Doors’ Nine Legendary Bailiffs!
It’s just that Mister Dong only said that the Six Doors was in the capital but never clearly stated where in the capital they were located.
She had originally assumed that she would immediately be able to find such a well-known place once she reached the capital and didn’t prepare much in the way of travel expenses. On her journey, she was also delayed by several days of rainstorms. Now, what she had left on her could probably be just enough to buy two bowls of noodles in a place like the capital. If she couldn’t find Six Doors before nightfall, she didn’t even know where she could stay for the night.
If she knew that this would happen, she should have asked Mister Dong for proper directions instead of leaving in such a hurry!
As Chu Chu lamented her plight to herself, she suddenly saw a person decked in deep red official robes turn out from an alley. He held a large sabre, looked distinguished, and had a powerful stride. He looks just like the Legendary Bailiffs that Mister Dong described! She dashed after that person impulsively.
Chu Chu had completely forgotten what Mister Dong said about how to cup her fists and bow properly in greeting. She grabbed his arm and exclaimed, “Lord Legendary Bailiff, I want to go to Six Doors!”
Chu Chu only realised after she spoke, that the person she had grabbed was a pale and handsome young man in his twenties, who looked like a scholar and not at all like a Legendary Bailiff. He stared at her with a shocked expression.
Chu Chu panicked and quickly let him go. Just as she was about to say that she had gotten the wrong person, that scholar had regained his composure. He seemed to have guessed her thoughts and smirked, “I’m no legendary bailiff but I do work for the Six Doors. Why do you want to go to the Six Doors?”
Chu Chu immediately brightened up when she heard that he knew of the Six Doors and even worked for them. She lifted her chin and said proudly, “I also want to go work for them.”
The scholar’s smile grew. Chu Chu hurriedly added, “I know that there are also women who work in the Six Doors!”
The scholar smiled and nodded, saying rather seriously, “Of course there are. There are those that clean the front courtyards, those who serve in the middle courtyards, and those who wash and cook in the back. There are plenty of women there.”
Chu Chu turned red in frustration. “I don’t want to do that kind of work! I want to be a coroner, a coroner for the Six Doors!”
The scholar startled slightly. He shifted the sabre from his right hand to his left, so that he could pat her shoulder. He looked at Chu Chu, who was so anxious she was about to cry, with a faint smile. “Calm down… Now, what’s your name?”
“Chu Chu, as in the idiom ‘delicate and lovable’ (pronounced chu chu dong ren)3”
The scholar smiled mildly, “And your surname?”
“It’s Chu. Surname Chu, name Chu. This name is both easy to remember and pleasing to the ear. There are five girls named as such in just our town.”
The scholar nodded earnestly. “It certainly is a nice-sounding name. How old are you this year?”
“Seventeen.” Chu Chu seemed to think of something else and quickly added, “I’ve been watching my father perform autopsies since I was three, and started helping him when I turned seven. I can do everything that my father and brother can. Father says that I am more talented than my brother and everyone in town knows that.”
The scholar knitted his brows slightly, a smile still on his lips. “Which county?”
Chu Chu bit her lip. Everyone said that people in the capital looked down on those that came from small towns, but since he is someone from the Six Doors, she must tell the truth. “Zizhu County.”
The faint smile on the scholar’s face remained unchanged as he nodded, “No wonder you have the Suzhou accent.”
Chu Chu’s eyes brightened, as if she just saw her family. “You know of Zizhu county?”
“I know your county magistrate, Lord Zheng.”
“Lord Zheng is good official who judges cases very thoroughly. He’s just married too many women, so Madam Zheng isn’t happy about it.”
The scholar looked amused. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
Since she had left Suzhou, this is the first person she met who knows Zizhu county and he is even familiar with the magistrate Lord Zheng! Chu Chu instantly felt like she had met a kindred spirit from her hometown. She was about to launch into the story of Lord Zheng and Madam Zheng when he spoke again, with the same genial tone as before, “Why did you take the trouble to travel all the way here to the capital if you were getting along well in your hometown?”
Chu Chu clasped her fingers together and pouted, “Back home, women are not allowed to be coroners…but Mister Dong said that there are female bailiffs amongst the Six Doors’ Nine Legendary Bailiffs, so there must also be female coroners.”
“Who is Mister Dong?”
“He’s the storyteller of Tianxiang Teahouse in our town. He knows a lot about the matters of the Six Doors, including all the triumphs of the Nine Legendary Bailiffs.”
The scholar coughed several times, trying to hide his laughter. “You want to be a coroner so badly?”
Chu Chu lifted her chin and proclaimed, “My family has worked as coroners since my grandfather’s grandfather’s time.”
The scholar nodded thoughtfully, seeming to seriously consider something before he spoke again. “If you really want to be a coroner for the Six Doors, you must take part in the qualification tests. Can you do it?”
When she heard that there was a way to enter the Six Doors, Chu Chu immediately exclaimed, “Yes, of course I can!” Isn’t that exactly why she came here?
“There’s a test taking place early tomorrow. Do you have enough time to prepare for it?”
“There’s no need to prepare. I can even take the test right now!”
The scholar smiled mildly. “In that case, be at the main gates of the Ministry of Justice tomorrow at 5am (Mao hour, first mark). There’ll be someone there to tell you what to do.”
Chu Chu became anxious again when she heard the words ‘Ministry of Justice’. “Isn’t it a test for Six Doors? Why must I go to the Ministry of Justice?”
“The admissions for the Six Doors are managed by the Ministry of Justice. Did Mister Dong not mention that?”
Chu Chu shook her head. Mister Dong really had never talked about it.
“You now know more about the Six Doors than Mister Dong then.”
Chu Chu praised fervently, “Mister Dong was right. The officials of the Six Doors are all good people.”
The scholar laughed and reminded, “Tomorrow, when you see those wearing official robes at the Ministry of Justice, you must remember to greet them properly. You can’t just go up to them and pull at their arms.”
Chu Chu’s face turned crimson as she nodded frantically, looking just like a chicken bobbing for corn. “I’ll remember.”
“My surname is Jing, called Jing Yi. Jing, as in the characters for sun and capital; Yi, as in the characters for stand and feather3. The people of the capital are complicated and a young lady like you must be careful. If you meet with any unsolvable difficulties in the next few days, you can just mention my name at any yamen and I’ll hear about it soon enough.”
What a bold claim! But from his tone, he didn’t seem like he was boasting. Chu Chu’s eyes grew wide as she stared at him and became a little tongue-tied. “You…you’re…you must be the leader of the Six Doors then!”
“Leader of the Six Doors?”
“Said to come and go without trace, like the legendary dragon deity whom people can only get the barest glimpse of, the one who commands the Nine Legendary Bailiffs, the mysterious leader of the Six Doors who can solve all cases under the sun, whom people of the jianghu term the Jade-faced Judge!”
The smile froze on Jing Yi’s face as faint black lines4 seemed to appear on his forehead. What is this nonsense…
“I cannot be considered the leader. I’ve just worked there for long enough and have many friends.”
“You’re a Legendary Bailiff then?”
Jing Yi still shook his head. “I’m a civil officer at the Six Doors.”
Chu Chu eyed the large sabre in his hands suspiciously. Mister Dong said that the Legendary Bailiffs would not casually reveal their identities in order to avoid inconveniences while working on cases. However, since he had already revealed his name, why couldn’t he just reveal everything at once?
Jing Yi followed her gaze and guessed at her thoughts. He quirked his lips and waved the sabre slightly. “A Legendary Bailiff had left this at my place. If you can successfully pass the qualification tests and enter the Six Doors, I’ll have him recognise you as his sister.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Didn’t Mister Dong tell you that people of the Six Doors are men of their word?”
“He did!”
Prince An’s Residence
“Lord Jing”
Jing Yi waved the sabre in his hands as a greeting, in return to the deep bows the two doormen offered him, as he continued on his way without a second’s pause, heading directly into the inner backyard with the ease of long familiarity.
From the start of winter the the last two days before the new year was the period where the Prince An’s Residence saw the most visitors; they were already overwhelmed with guests, so towards this extremely familiar face, the staff just let him do as he pleased.
Anyways, Jing Yi had never acted like an outsider, a guest, in Prince An’s Residence.
Anyways, most people wouldn’t be able to enter the place where Jing Yi was headed.
Sansi Pavillion (Reappraisal Pavillion)
Every year, if someone were to arrive at Prince An’s Residence to visit His Highness Xiao Jinyu, their calling card would ultimately be sent to the doors of Sansi Pavillion and handed over to the door guards. After that, they could only wait enthusiastically.
In the end, they would either simply receive a note detailing the solution to the problem, or they would be sent to some hall or another to meet, according to their official rank. In any case, they wouldn’t dream of entering the doors of Sansi Pavillion.
Jing Yi is the exception.
Just now, while Chu Chu was constantly nattering on about the Six Doors, Jing Yi had thought that, if there would be any building in the capital that looked like the Six Doors that she described, the one that most resembled it would be this Sansi Pavillion.
He himself rarely entered the doors of the Sansi Pavillion. Normally, he climbed in through the windows instead.
At this time of the day, Xiao Jinyu typically hid himself away within the pavilion. Jing Yi found it too troublesome to take the stairs and the guards found it an extraneous move to announce his arrival. As time passed, he and the guards of Prince An’s Residence had come to a common understanding: he would climb in through the windows while they acted like they saw nothing.
As a result, Xiao Jinyu, who was standing beside the window intending to open the shutters for a breath of fresh air to clear his head, had only just the faintest inkling that something was not quite right before the window suddenly flew open and hit his head with a resounding thud.
His vision swam. He was about to reach out to grab something to steady himself when a steel blade hilt wrapped in deerhide appeared from nowhere and struck the bridge of his nose with a bang.
In this confusion, Xiao Jinyu had just managed to grab hold of the windowsill when he felt a large foot land unerringly on his hand and stepped on it viciously.
Before he even had the chance to make a sound, a body that was a good 30% heavier than his had already smashed him onto the cold and hard floor.
Even though his head was throbbing and spinning from the collision with the window, Xiao Jinyu could still clearly hear the groan he let out in that moment where his bones made contact with the ground. “JING YI!”
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…” Jing Yi scrambled upright. In the process, he left several distinct and complete footprints of black mud on Xiao Jinyu’s ivory-white robes, identical to that which had been left on the back of his hand.
Statistically speaking, the possibility of such accidental injuries is extremely miniscule. However, when the three main conditions of time, place, and person were just right, such a situation isn’t completely unprecedented either.
Thus, after Jing Yi scrambled upright, he quickly closed the windows tightly and squatted down at the foot of the wall with both arms wrapped around his head, waiting for Xiao Jinyu to get up and then sentence him to his punishment.
After hiding in his arms for a long while, Xiao Jinyu finally spoke, his voice brimming with fury and frustration. “Come here!”
2567 words (Eng), 6.5 pages
TRANSLATOR’S NOTES
- Song Ci was an actual person (1186–1249), a Chinese physician, judge, forensic medical scientist, anthropologist, and writer of the Southern Song dynasty. He was the first known anthropologist who wrote a groundbreaking book titled Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified 洗冤集錄.
- Zizhu County: Zizhu = Purple Bamboo
- People often introduce their names in reference to common idioms or with how the characters are written so that others would a) know how to write their names, and b) know the meaning behind their names.
- Imagine these faint black lines manga-style lol.
On Six Doors:
So the Six Doors is actually a colloquial nickname for the yamen of the Three Judicial Offices. (So the person who directed Chu Chu to the Ministry of Justice actually wasn’t wrong to do so.)
In common legends, the Six Doors refers to a special branch of the Three Judicial Offices that deals primarily with disputes between the jianghu sects and apprehending elusive criminals wanted by the authorities. At the same time, it is in good standing with the major sects of the jianghu and is very influential both in the jianghu and the imperial court. Thus, the Emperor would be very reliant on the Six Doors’ might and influence.
Source: Baidu
TL’s Rant
This is just about twice as long as my regular BPC chapters. I’m exhausted typing this lol. Would anyone be interested in seeing more of this? I don’t think there’s any official translation and I doubt I’d be able to do the whole thing BUT I wouldn’t mind translating just certain scenes in random chapters.
Comment below to let me know!
Did anyone also get severe 2nd-hand embarrassment from reading about Chu Chu? I’m so glad the drama moderated the cringiness, and actually included her tales of the Six Doors tastefully. (see my review here).
I was looking forward to the last scene where Jing Yi bumped into Xiao Jinyu in the drama cos this is just so comical but it turned out to be just a very short flashback. The drama seems to have added in some BL vibes though lol.
Also am I alone in seeing the MDZS Lan Jingyi vibes in this Jing Yi? This Jing Yi is also the complete opposite of BPC’s Prince Jing Yi – their transliterations are the same but the characters for Yi are different.
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Chapter 2 is also up!