A Fated Encounter with Sheng

Twenty years ago, the only century-old medical clinic left by the Ying family was sealed by the Court of Judicial Review.

Once known for treating the common people and even providing a prescription for the poison "Bone-Eater," deemed incurable by countless imperial physicians and used to treat the Empress Dowager, the clinic was sealed for only one stated reason:

The sixth-generation Ying heir, Ying Yun's son Ying Shiqian, colluded with the demon clan, concocted fake medicine for consumption, and intended to commit murder.

The Ying family was framed by an imperial decree. All the men were executed, and the women were exiled, never to return.

Only Ying Xianyu, a woman over thirty-five, escaped this fate because she had successfully treated the Empress Dowager.

But no one knew that she had given birth to a boy named Ying Lan.

With all the family's possessions and prescriptions confiscated, Ying Xianyu struggled to live on her own.

The little food she had left wasn't enough to keep them alive. Ying Xianyu covered Ying Lan with the cotton blanket hidden beneath the bed and held her frail son close as she died in the winter, before he had even turned two.

Ying Lan is thirteen now. He will never forget the sight of soldiers taking his family away and his mother weeping in despair.

He wants revenge.

Ying Lan doesn't know how he survived. It was probably a white fox demon who saved him.

That demon was strange. He could transform into a human, and his name was... Ling Zhisheng.

He was a handsome young man with gentle eyes and a warmth that Ying Lan found inexplicably familiar.

He told Ying Lan that he had demon blood, and might even be a fox himself, then raised him to adulthood.

Ying Lan thought the fox demon seemed familiar because he had helped his mother.

But when Ying Lan was sixteen, the fox demon disappeared without a trace.

Ying Lan was taken in by a man whose face resembled the fox demon's.

He became the young man's disciple. His master was named Ling Zhisheng,

...the same name as the fox demon's.

Ling Zhisheng treated him well, but sometimes work kept him terribly busy, and Ying Lan understood.

Then Ying Lan saw something more familiar than anything else.

A note, written like a secret imperial order:

At the southwest corner of the East Market, a cotton goods shop sells shoddy cotton clothing. The owner is a gambling addict. Raid the entire household on the twenty-ninth day of the fourth month.

Signed: Ling Zhisheng, Assistant Minister of the Court of Judicial Review

Theme: One lifetime binds one fate, and one fate defines a lifetime