I Practiced Medicine in the Great Ming, and Every Court Official Avoided Me

“Shen Mo! Stay away from my wife!”

Shen Mo of the Imperial Medical Bureau has a pair of miraculous hands. He can diagnose an illness by taking a pulse, and he can keep every high-ranking official in the court on edge.

When he takes the pulse of a Vice Minister's wife, the fragrance of rouge on her wrist always clings to his fingertips. When he treats a Minister's female relative with acupuncture, a handkerchief embroidered with twin lotuses always “accidentally” ends up in his medicine case.

Zhou Xian's goatee puffs up into a fluffy ball every few days. Li Song's grand tutor's chair is always blocking the doorway to the inner room. Lu Bing's jade thumb ring has been polished to a shine. These men, who can call the winds and summon the rain in court, guard against him more closely than they guard against the Japanese pirates.

Playing with the pearl earring he just “found,” Shen Mo smiles at the flower of love slipped to him from behind the embroidered screen. “Rest assured, sir. I only treat illnesses. I won't lose my heart.”

But those notes slipped through his window late at night, the sachets that appear and disappear in his medicine case, and the tassels at the ladies' temples that always brush against his shoulder

Everyone knows that this white-robed healer's medicine case holds more than silver needles and salves. It holds the hearts and hidden currents of the entire Ming bureaucracy.