Tales from Outside the Clinic

At the Huichuntang Clinic in the capital, there is a female proprietor named Shen Zhiwei. Outsiders know her as a healer whose silver needles can work miracles, but they do not know she is even better at speaking with the “voiceless.” Those who can never speak again leave their final testimony at her fingertips.

She charges five coins to take a living person’s pulse, but two hundred taels to uncover the truth for the voiceless. People laugh and call her a money-grubber who’s afraid of ghosts. She only says, “The living can cry out in pain. The voiceless can only give me nightmares, so of course they cost extra.”

One strange old case after another comes to light: a celebrated courtesan dies young, a top scholar goes mad, tribute offerings bring madness, the Empress Dowager suffers nightmares… On the surface, it seems the work of ghosts and spirits, but in truth, it is human hearts hiding secrets. Shen Zhiwei reads poison in bruises on fingertips, glimpses palace intrigues in silver needles behind the ear, and pieces together buried truths from every wound disguised as an accident.

Xiao Heng, the Assistant Minister of the Court of Judicial Review who claims to lead a carefree life, thought she was a money-grubber afraid of ghosts when they first met. Later, though, he was always carrying a lantern for her in the dead of night. He would frown and hand her a handkerchief while she examined a case, and stubbornly stand guard at the door when she was afraid of the dark. They went from client and contractor to bickering partners who would face death together.

But when every clue points to the old case of the Eastern Palace from fifteen years ago, Shen Zhiwei discovers that the truth she seeks is the very secret her father gave his life to protect. The case file bears the words “Sudden Upheaval,” but she can clearly see that only someone who excelled both as an imperial physician and a coroner could have set such a trap.

The clinic’s unofficial records contain no prescriptions, only the human heart.

[Standalone Mysteries · Light Comedy · Strong Female Detective · Bickering Turns to Love]