Emergency physician Zhou Yanbai transmigrates to the fictional Great Jing dynasty after an accident, becoming a penniless scholar who has drowned and is on the brink of death. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself not in a wish-fulfillment story where a golden finger lets him steamroll everyone, but in an ancient medical world plagued by scarce medicinal herbs, backward medical knowledge, and low social status for physicians.
He had hoped to keep his head down and survive, but his modern medical knowledge repeatedly draws him into trouble: using scraping therapy to save a peddler suffering from heatstroke, improving prescriptions through anatomy, and fighting an epidemic with vinegar fumigation. Yet ancient medical practices are deeply entrenched. His “heresy” earns him the hostility of the Imperial Medical Bureau, the ostracism of his peers, and even accusations of being a “witch doctor” from the common folk.
Worse still, he discovers he is not the only “odd one out.” Sang Xiaoman, an apprentice pharmacist disguised as a boy, has a mysterious past and superb medical skills, yet is suppressed because of her gender. An acupuncture chart on a bronze figure left behind by a wandering Daoist bears traces of modern medicine. And a token from the mysterious “Medicine King Valley,” carried by a strange patient, points to a conspiracy that could overturn the medical world of Great Jing...
With the “Apricot Grove Imperial Examination” approaching, Zhou Yanbai must find a balance between tradition and innovation. Otherwise, he will not only lose his place in the world, but may also be burned at the stake for “bewitching the people with sorcery.”
Will he heal the world, or defy fate and change his own?
This is a medical battle spanning a thousand years, and the legend of a modern physician struggling to survive and make his way in the ancient world.
