For three years, the iron chimes beneath the eaves of the Cold Palace rang in the wind. No one knew that behind its rotten wooden door lay a blade capable of cutting into the dynasty’s deepest ills.
When Lin Qinghuan transmigrated, shackles bound her wrists. She stood accused of plotting against the imperial heir.
Her faded phoenix robe reeked of bitter medicinal dregs, yet from a moldy corner she unearthed notoginseng and mugwort.
With silver needles, she stopped the bleeding of a palace maid who had thrown herself into a well. She performed a cesarean to save the life of an enemy suffering obstructed labor. Even the Emperor’s old wound, festering for ten years over his heart, healed beneath her tempered scalpel.
Xiao Yu grabbed her by the throat and sneered, “You think a new body will stop me from recognizing those hands that poisoned me?”
She swiftly pressed an acupuncture needle to his vital point. “Your Majesty is mistaken. These hands now treat blindness of the eyes and heart.”
The miscarriage-inducing medicine in that bowl at the Pepper Palace all those years ago had been steeped in the most poisonous plot within the ninefold palace walls.
As phoenix-tree leaves fell across bloodstained silver needles, she climbed the jade steps, carrying the medical texts the Imperial Medical Academy had knelt to offer her. Behind her, a hundred thousand petitions from the people fluttered like snow.
The sharpest blade in this imperial palace had never been the dragon-slaying sword. It was the three inches of icy steel held in the divine physician’s hand.
