[The aloof, noble, untouchable Grand Secretary] VS [The clear-headed, independent Saintess of the Healer’s Valley]
Su Qingyuan, saintess of the Healer’s Valley, saves Pei Ji, a down-and-out scholar who fell from a cliff and lost his sight.
To cure his eyes, she uses her own heart’s blood in the medicine. To fund his imperial exams, she pawns every dowry gift bestowed on her by the emperor.
She stays by his side through his hardest years, watching him place first in the highest imperial examination and rise to the position of Grand Secretary.
But the first thing Pei Ji does after taking power is bring back his beloved cousin and demote his wife to the status of a concubine.
Su Qingyuan coughs up blood and dies in the bitter winter cold, while next door, he welcomes his new bride beneath a procession stretching for miles.
When she opens her eyes again, Su Qingyuan is back on the day Pei Ji’s sight has just returned. She sees the man still cold and taciturn, and the letters he is secretly writing to bring his cousin to the capital. She no longer makes a scene.
This time, she takes back every kindness she ever gave him, slaps a divorce agreement against Pei Ji’s face, and walks away with her Healer’s Valley token.
Pei Ji sneers and tears up the agreement. She’s just throwing a tantrum. Once she’s suffered enough, she’ll come back on her own.
Pei Ji waits and waits, but Su Qingyuan never comes to apologize.
Instead, news arrives that a sudden fire has broken out at the Healer’s Valley, and that a charred corpse wearing her jade pendant has been carried out.
That night, the usually unflappable, cold-hearted Grand Secretary, who never so much as changed expression when Mount Tai crumbled before him, goes completely mad. His hair turns white overnight. He draws his sword and slaughters everyone who ever bullied her, becoming the most terrifying living demon in the capital.
Three years later, the new emperor ascends the throne, and the people present him with an unparalleled female physician who can raise the dead and restore flesh to bone.
In the great hall, the white-haired Grand Secretary, once so high above everyone, loses control and tumbles down the jade steps when he sees her face. He falls to his knees before the assembled court officials and clutches her skirt tightly.
“Yuanyuan, I was wrong... Please...”
