The Southern Song's Golden Hairpin: A Body Therapist's Path to the Ministry of Justice

In late spring of the third year of Xianchun, the rain in Lin'an always carried a clinging dampness that seemed impossible to shake. Qidiaodage woke from the cold. Biting chill seeped up from the hard board beneath her, mingling with a faint musty smell. She instinctively hunched her shoulders. The movement tugged at the wound in her left arm, and a sharp stab of pain made her eyes fly open. Above her was a dingy gray canopy. Its coarse hemp fabric rasped against her skin, nothing like the velvet mattress in her apartment. "Ugh..." She sucked in a breath and struggled to sit up, but a thin, withered hand pressed her back down. "Miss, don't move. I've just put medicine on your wound." An old voice spoke beside her, thick with a Wuyue accent.