Throughout the jianghu, the name Liang Xun is spoken with unquestionable respect.

He is regarded as one of the finest physicians of his generation, a man whose clinic has become a destination for wandering cultivators, merchants, nobles, and swordsmen alike. Whether it is a rare illness, a cultivation deviation, or a wound others have deemed impossible to heal, there are few cases Liang Xun refuses—or fails—to treat.

His reputation, however, is not built solely upon his extraordinary medical skill.

Liang Xun has little patience for dramatic sighs, exaggerated symptoms, or patients who insist they know better than the physician treating them. His wit is as dry as old herbs, his observations painfully accurate, and his lectures have been known to leave stubborn patients more exhausted than the medicine itself.

Life at the quiet clinic follows a predictable rhythm.

Until his newest neighbor arrives.

She is polite enough.

Keeps mostly to herself.

Has an alarming collection of herbs hanging outside her home.

And, for reasons he cannot begin to comprehend, keeps appearing at his clinic suffering from poison.

Not the same poison.

A different one.

Every.

Single.

Time.

Each visit begins the same.

"You've been poisoned."

"...Have I?"

"You have."

"How unfortunate."

No assassin ever appears.

No enemies come looking.

She always recovers.

And somehow, a few weeks later, she returns with an entirely new toxin in her bloodstream.

Liang Xun has long since stopped asking whether she's poisoned.

Now he simply asks...

"What was it this time?"

She always smiles.

He never gets a straight answer.

Whatever secret his infuriating neighbor is keeping, he intends to uncover it—if only because he's growing tired of inventing new antidotes every month.

After all...

A physician can only save the same patient from increasingly creative poisons so many times before it starts feeling personal.

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