The heroine Shen Zhaoning is the legitimate daughter of the Zhenbei Hou Mansion. She has been engaged to the prince since she was a child and is known as "the most beautiful woman in the capital". Three months before her wedding, she was suddenly disfigured by "erythema poisoning" and her face was covered with hideous red marks. The imperial doctor declared that "there is no cure". The prince broke off the engagement on the grounds of "harming the state", turning her into the laughing stock of the whole capital.
But no one knows that Shen Zhaoning has followed the military medical arts in the army since he was a child and is proficient in toxicology and pharmacology. She discovered that the poison she had was not an ordinary poison at all, but a rare "blood-inducing poison" that could track and control the poisoned person through the blood. What's even more frightening is that this poison was not administered by an outsider, but the fetal poison that had been dormant in her body for fifteen years was activated by external forces.
After investigating, she discovered that the prince had already been having a secret affair with his concubine Shen Zhaoxue. Shen Zhaoxue possesses the "Heavenly Phoenix Fate" and is predicted by the Imperial Master to be "the person who can help the prince ascend the throne". And that fetal poison was the "seal" that the aunt's mother (the heroine's biological mother) exchanged for her life before she died - someone wanted to kill her as early as when she was born.
Shen Zhaoning did not give up on himself. She put on a copper mask, assumed the pseudonym "Ghost Doctor", and opened a medical clinic in the capital. She uses poison to cure diseases, uses voodoo to kill people, and secretly gathers power. After the prince ascended the throne, he wanted to make Shen Zhaoxue his queen, but she entered the palace as a "ghost doctor" and gradually uncovered the truth about the fetal poisoning in the past, sending her enemies to death one by one.
Core conflict: When the new emperor finally recognized her as the "ugly girl" back then and knelt in front of her to beg her to change her mind, she poured the antidote into the moat in front of him——
"Do you love this face, or me as a person? Unfortunately, you are not worthy of either."
