Story summary
During the Guangxu period, a "red lead case" broke out in the capital. Many pregnant women died mysteriously and their fetuses were removed. Lu Zhanpeng (Ginkgo/Cyan), a master of acupuncture at Taiyuan Hospital, was ordered to investigate the case, and he partnered with Cheng Xueji (Baimei/Yuebai), the successor of medicinal diet. The two found traces of Western drugs in the deceased's body, and the clues pointed to the obstetrics clinic of Zhang Wanyi (Western Rose/Crimson), a female doctor at the British Embassy.
During the investigation, Lu Zhanpeng's acupuncture bronze figure and the Cheng family's ancestral "Green Bag Book" were stolen one after another, and an old case of a military doctor from the Opium War twenty years ago was implicated. Midwife Shen Atao (Luwei/Indigo), as a key witness, died suddenly after revealing the palace secret recipe of "red lead as medicine". When Lu and Cheng traced the case to the Tianjin military port, they accidentally discovered that Japanese spies were using an improved version of the "red lead recipe" to cultivate bacterial weapons.
The final showdown took place in the anatomy room of the Western Medical College, where Zhang Wanyi's scalpel and Lu Zhanpeng's nine needles clashed in a rain of blood. With the cracking of the ginkgo leaf vein code, the truth emerged - this conspiracy across the world of Chinese and Western medicine was actually a medical experiment conducted by the great powers to launch germ warfare. Cheng Xueji used medicinal formulas to neutralize toxins, while Lu Zhanpeng used acupuncture to seal acupoints to destroy the strains, preventing a biochemical crisis that could rewrite history on the eve of the Gengzi Incident.
