As his grandfather took his last breath, he pressed a black needle into Lin Bei’s hand. Three inches long, with no eye or handle, it felt warm in his palm.
On the night Lin Bei kept vigil, the needle melted and burrowed into his palm. One hundred and eight techniques of the Taiyi Needles flooded his mind overnight. When he opened his eyes again, he could see the clotted blood beneath people’s skin.
The village’s old doctor was gone, and someone had to keep the clinic by the entrance to the village open. The next day, the village chief collapsed from a heart attack. The county hospital told his family to prepare for the worst. Lin Bei crouched down and pinched a needle between his fingers. “One needle will do.”
But he couldn’t protect the medicine chest his grandfather had left behind. All twelve compartments were empty. Someone had gotten to it before him.
The local thugs came to collect a debt, but what they really wanted was never those few acres of land. They were after the box that held the needles. Following the trail from the empty box led back to an old case from thirty years ago, one nobody dared talk about, and a medicine merchant who controlled half the county’s herbal trade.
One needle: from the village entrance to the county seat, and straight toward justice that had been delayed for thirty years.
It's okay, very novel and worth reading!