The Weighing Scale’s Spring and Autumn

Food delivery rider Yang Mengqi carries the Republican-era steelyard her grandfather left her and kneels until her knees bleed on the bluestone steps, earning her place as an apprentice to Yan Jiuzhen, the “Cold-Faced Yama.” During her three years of apprenticeship, she nearly dies after chewing aconite, practices flying-needle techniques on layer after layer of rice paper, and prepares rehmannia through nine rounds of steaming and drying. Then, in a market tucked away in a narrow alley, she stumbles upon the dark truth: ginseng smoked with sulfur and donkey-hide gelatin passed off as horsehide glue. When a century-old pharmacy becomes embroiled in the theft of a bronze acupuncture figure, she uses the tip of her steelyard to expose the scam of adulterated mugwort, and identifies the truth of an arsenic poisoning from a patient’s tongue coating. But she is forced to choose between her school’s forbidden techniques and a patient’s life. With a single steelyard, she weighs the medicinal herbs and the human heart; with three fingers on a pulse, she diagnoses the deep-rooted ailments of the age. Watch this woman physician protect the last three mace of the healer’s spirit amid the clash between ancient methods and a flood of capital.