[Historical Mystery + Standalone Cases + Ensemble Investigation + Mild Horror]
A wealthy merchant who had been bedridden for seven years suddenly recovers, only to drop dead in the street half an hour later. A woman missing for seven days returns home on her own, insisting that she has "already died once." Brides-to-be vanish one after another, leaving only an unclaimed red embroidered shoe on a long street in the rain...
Strange cases keep cropping up in Shengjing. Sixteen-year-old Wen Qi, a disciple of Medicine King Valley, descends from the mountains by imperial decree. Starting with a case of "borrowed life," she joins Pei Zhaoyan, a junior official at the Dali Temple, in unraveling layer upon layer of mystery.
She identifies medicines and tests for poison; he investigates people and sees through schemes. As an autopsy officer, noblewomen, constables, and martial wanderers are drawn into the cases, a group of people who were once strangers gradually become partners in solving them.
Borrowed life, returning souls, bridal red, faceless corpses...
Each bizarre case seems to be the work of ghosts and gods, but every one ultimately conceals the desires and secrets of the living.
And buried deep beneath all the clues is a forbidden medical text long thought lost: The Reversed Classic of a Hundred Herbs.
They think they're solving one murder after another.
Until Wen Qi realizes that the person in the shadows may have been using all of Shengjing as a testing ground for drugs.
