A Pulse-Reading Casebook of the Realm

In the final years of the Wanli era, human lives were hidden among the medicinal fragrances of Jiangnan.

Modern physician Shen Zhibai woke up in a county town in the late Ming Dynasty, an unregistered, undocumented apprentice at a medical clinic.

A case in which someone died after taking a restorative medicine led him to spot counterfeits in the medicinal dregs, concealment in the pulse, and an old medicine ledger in the account books, one that reached all the way to the docks, the prince’s manor, the border troops, and the Imperial Medical Academy.

Others treated illnesses; he saw the state of the realm.

Others investigated cases; he examined people’s hearts.

Only when shoddy medicines, epidemics, military supplies, old cases tied to a prince’s manor, and medical policy at court became intertwined did Shen Zhibai understand:

The hardest thing to cure in this world

is never an illness.

It is an old order in which everyone insists they’ve done nothing wrong.