During the Jingtai reign of the Great Yan dynasty, impoverished scholar Gu Yunzhou is forced to marry into the household of Chu, the Minister of War, to save his gravely ill mother. He becomes a live-in son-in-law despised by all. On his wedding night, he is badly wounded by an assassin and unexpectedly activates the Life-and-Death Jade Pendant, an heirloom left by his father. Through it, he inherits Guiguzi's medical arts and gains miraculous healing skills.
From a son-in-law scorned by his mother-in-law and mocked by his colleagues, he rises to become head of the Imperial Medical Academy and the emperor's own "Divine Healer of All Under Heaven." With the Nine Palaces Resurrection Needles, he brings the dead back to life; with the Life-and-Death Jade Pendant, he decides who lives and dies. He cures poison, outdoes imperial physicians, saves the empress, and turns the tables on everyone who wronged him. Yet at court, the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian holds sway, the Third Prince eyes the throne, Xiao Hanfeng, the enemy who crippled his hands, has returned, and his father, exiled to the frontier, remains missing...
When the son-in-law dons an imperial gold plaque and the healer is swept into a struggle for power, Gu Yunzhou fights shoulder to shoulder with Chu Qingwan, who disguises herself as a man. With silver needles as blades and a benevolent heart as his shield, he carves out a path through the treacherous capital. This is a clash of medical skill and political intrigue, and a story of defying fate and rising from the gutter: a son-in-law is no nobody, a healer's heart is compassionate, life and death are in his hands, and the world is his to command.
