Before joining the imperial court a young Di Renjie was a minor judge in Bianzhou. When his mentor Yan Liben was welcoming Empress Wu back to the imperial court from the Ganye Temple, he encountered a strange ghostly incident called "Qingji". Master Yan was wrongly accused of being the murderer who intended to kill Empress and was jailed. To unravel the mystery, Dee comes to Chang'an alone, and with the help of his lover Gongsun Yu and his friend Yang Lu, a small-time gangster in Chang'an, he solves the "Qing Ji" murder case