My name is Li Zhengyan, and I’m a country doctor.
Ten years ago, my father “died suddenly of an acute illness.” I believed it for ten years, until another person died in the medicinal fields of Hejian. Mold blotches covered the root of his tongue, his fingernails had turned blue-purple, and black blood seeped from his nose and mouth. He had been slowly eaten alive by “living poison,” and his death looked exactly like my father’s!
Tonghe Pharmacy, which sells counterfeit medicine, has the Imperial Hospital behind it. I answered the imperial proclamation and saved the Empress Dowager, then entered the Imperial Hospital. Its director, Zhang Chengfu, offered me a stack of banknotes to keep quiet. I flung them straight in his face.
That night, I dug out my father’s old medical notes and learned that he had investigated Tonghe Pharmacy, too. Afterward, he “fell ill.”
A counterfeit-drug network, sinister shadows in the imperial palace, and murders by living poison: one old case after another weighs on my heart. Real medicine saves lives; fake medicine takes them. I will personally avenge this blood feud!
