On her first day as a maid in the prince’s manor, Qing Han finds someone burning with a fever and close to death. With no medicine, she uses cold water and strong liquor to bring the fever down. With no knife, she sews the wound shut with a needle and thread heated over a flame. She is a modern surgeon who has transmigrated into the age of Dayao. Her hands have saved guards on the brink of death and brought an epidemic in the prince’s manor under control. What she does not know is that the seemingly frail Prince Jing, Xiao Yu, who coughs up blood day after day, has been hiding his true condition for ten years. At court, the Third Prince holds absolute power, while the Liu family watches hungrily. As for him, he feigns illness, lies low, and endures in silence, waiting for the chance to turn the tables.
Then she appears. He probes her background, and she answers with her medical skills. He tests her loyalty, and she saves his life with acupuncture in the dead of night. “Aren’t you afraid of me?” “You’re a patient, Your Highness, and I’m a doctor. What is there to fear?” When someone poisons her medicine, he stays calm and turns the plot against them, rooting out the Liu family’s hidden agents in a single night. When the crown prince is framed for treason, she spots a flaw in the ink of a secret letter and helps him turn the tables, sending shock waves through the court. He shields her from the hidden arrows of political intrigue; she treats his old injuries and heals his wounded heart. When plague ravages the land, she rushes to the front lines. When blood rains down on the battlefield, she carries her medicine chest into a city doomed to fall. He tells her, “I could give up this realm, but I will protect you, no matter what.” She says, “Then stay alive and watch this realm find peace with me.” From the woodshed to the court, from lying low to striking back, the final move in the game he spent ten years setting up is finally made because of her. And with the hands of a healer, she has not only saved his life, but warmed the heart he had kept hidden for ten years.
The day they retire after accomplishing all they set out to do, he takes her with him to live in seclusion south of the Yangtze. She says, “I only want to live an ordinary life with you.” He says, “All right. For the rest of my life, I’ll do as you wish.”
