Synopsis of The Record of the Mysterious Pivot of a Hundred Herbs
On the night Zhang Zhongjing, the Sage of Medicine of the late Eastern Han, completed Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases, the spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth breathed life into 365 medicinal herbs. They took human form and concealed themselves in the regions where their ingredients grew across the Nine Provinces. Licorice guarded Liangzhou and mediated disputes, rhubarb lay in wait in Shu to break deadly curses, and ginseng beneath Changbai Mountain kept the dying alive and called their souls back. The herbs were sentient, and had formed a jianghu of their own.
During the Wude era of the Tang dynasty, the Demonic Medicine Alliance rose to power. It tampered with medical texts and twisted the properties of medicines, seeking to control all the world's medicine spirits. The cinnamon twig swordsman Gui Ruxin and the white peony physician Bai Shaoying were sent into the world. Following the passages of Treatise on Cold Damage, they traveled from the northern deserts of ephedra to the Central Plains of kudzu and the Bashu lands of aconite. They discovered that every passage concealed a martial art, every medicinal herb possessed a soul, and diagnosis in medicine could become a fight to the death.
From the lessons of the Greater Yang chapter, “support yang and preserve yin,” to the trials of the Yang Brightness chapter, “preserve fluids and protect the stomach,” the transformations of the Six Channels mirrored the stages of martial advancement. The medicine spirits took the flavors and properties of herbs as their bloodline and the meridians they entered as their schools, wielding techniques such as “Ephedra Decoction Swordplay,” “White Tiger Palm,” and “Purgative Qi Saber” in formations drawn from classic prescriptions. In the shadows, astrologers used The Celestial Record to calculate the fates of medicine spirits, heirs to the Acupuncture Canon used gold needles to locate points and break poisons, and a descendant of Zhongjing pursued the truth hidden for a thousand years with the original text in hand.
When the Demonic Medicine Alliance concocts the “Reversed Purgative Qi Decoction,” and the original text of Essentials from the Golden Cabinet comes to light, this jianghu's struggle over the fate of medicine will ultimately require a sovereign remedy capable of reversing life and death. In this fantasy epic where medical principles are martial arts and medicinal herbs are heroic spirits, every combination of chief, deputy, assistant, and envoy medicines is a metaphor for the jianghu's feuds, and every diagnosis of cold and heat, deficiency and excess, is a contest between the yin and yang of human nature.
