When Shen Zhiwei woke, the cup of poison meant to kill her was already at her lips.
As a modern forensic toxicologist, she could tell at a glance that the wine held two poisons: one meant to kill her, the other to make her death look like a sudden illness.
When she opened her eyes again, she had become the disgraced Crown Princess of the Great Sheng Dynasty, whose family had been executed and whose name was stained by the crime of poisoning an imperial heir. On the very night she was sentenced to death, assassins broke in and the palace attendants were silenced. Armed only with modern medical knowledge, the fighting skills she'd honed in boxing and kickboxing, and a shard of broken porcelain, she fought to survive.
From then on, she wielded injury examinations, poison detection, and physical evidence as weapons, investigating poisoned wine, fake corpses, treasury seals, and military supply ledgers from Hexi, gradually tearing open a vast web of corruption entrenched in both the palace and the court.
At her side was Xuetuan, who could sniff out lamp oil and poisonous plants, as well as Prince Jing Pei Yanchen, who had been ordered to keep an eye on her. He would step in when her life was on the line, but never make her choices for her. And time and again, she pulled him back from his own deadly predicaments.
When the personal physician she trusted most suddenly turned against her, and a clever adversary used legal procedure to force her to confess, Shen Zhiwei finally realized that it wasn't just a cup of poison that wanted her dead.
This time, she would live long enough to uncover the truth and make everyone who had condemned her to death watch her turn the tables.
