Chapter 1
Edward Quan ·
Everyone in the capital said Xie Tingheng, heir to the Marquis of Ningyuan, would not live to see his twentieth birthday.
I married into the household to bring him good fortune. My purpose was to use that door to save my father, unjustly imprisoned.
On our wedding night, I pressed my fingers to his pulse and proposed a bargain.
“I'll cure your illness. You'll help reopen my father's medicine case.”
He coughed until his eyes reddened, yet still found the humor to smile.
“Miss Sang, what if I don't live to see it reopened?”
I put away the pulse cushion and drew back the thick curtains sealing his room.
“I'll cure you. Starting tonight, learn how to live to a hundred.”
Later, he truly did walk out of the courtyard that had confined him for ten years. He helped clear my father's name too.
The whole capital thought the auspicious marriage had reached its happy conclusion.
Instead, he handed me a divorce agreement bearing his signature.
He wanted to return my choice in that hasty marriage.
Then, as a healthy man, he would ask to marry me again.
1
Xie Tingheng watched me for a long time, then lowered his head and laughed.
It was a quiet laugh, but it dragged a harsh fit of coughing through his chest.
I steadied his wrist and pressed two points on his back, holding each in turn.
By the time his breathing eased, his pale fingers had crumpled his dark red inner robe.
“Our first night, and my wife is already issuing orders about whether I live or die.”
He caught his breath and looked up.
“What if I disobey?”
“Then I'll bring the medicine and watch you drink it,” I answered briskly. “If you won't even take the bowl, I'll tell your parents you're deliberately ruining the wedding they spent so much on. Whose side do you think they'll take?”
He paused, then laughed again.
This time, he remembered to restrain it. Only his eyes curved.
“Yours, naturally. Mother cried harder watching you leave the bridal sedan today than if she'd been marrying off a daughter. Grandmother said anyone who upset the bride could kneel in the ancestral hall.”
Satisfied, I nodded.
“Then we're allies.”
“Wait.”
He took a small bronze seal from beneath his pillow and placed it in my palm.
“This will let you use our household's carriages and staff in the capital. Your father's case file is at the Capital Prefecture. Tomorrow, I'll have my retainer Cheng Yue submit a petition for retrial.”
“The investigation must follow the rules. I can't force the authorities to change a verdict. But I can make sure the evidence isn't buried again.”
I gripped the seal until it hurt.
My father, Sang Jichuan, had practiced medicine for over twenty years.
That winter, he became entangled in a counterfeit-drug case.
At the free clinic in the south of the city, several patients suffered vomiting and diarrhea after taking medicine. Three could not be saved.
The medicine basket bore our clinic's wooden inspection tag, so Father was imprisoned.
But he had personally rejected those red-rooted false ginsengs in front of witnesses. The tag was missing a corner—an old one our clinic had discarded long ago.
The sample he sealed and sent to the prefecture disappeared.
The case stalled.
When the Ningyuan household sought a female physician as an auspicious bride, I agreed.
I didn't expect them to suppress a case involving deaths.
I needed someone to knock on the prefecture's door so the damaged tag and missing medicine sample could be brought before the court.
Xie Tingheng had given me that way in.
“Thank you,” I said solemnly.
“Don't thank an ally just yet.”
He glanced at the tightly closed window.
“What did you say I had to do starting tonight?”
I stood and pulled aside all three layers of heavy bed curtains, then propped the window half open.
The early-spring night wind carried dampness and the scent of growing things, dispersing the room's thick calming incense.
A maid hurried in from the outer room, alarmed.
“Young mistress, the heir can't bear drafts!”
“What he can't bear is a room full of smoke.”
I picked up a partly burned incense stick and smelled it.
“Benzoin, agarwood, spikenard—all strong. His lungs aren't moving air freely. With the doors shut and incense burning every night, it's no wonder he can't sleep. Put it out and bring a light quilt.”
She looked at Xie Tingheng.
Leaning against the headboard, he nodded at leisure.
“From now on, her word comes first in this room.”
I turned toward him.
Candlelight lit his fine brows and thin face.
He had been ill too long to have much color, yet his manner was frank and composed.
No probing. No arrogance of rank.
For a moment, I thought this hasty marriage might be far better than I had expected.
2
When I woke the next morning, the bedding beside me was cold.
I put on a robe and went out.
Xie Tingheng sat beneath the window, a cloth at his mouth as he drank warm water.
Dawn had barely broken, yet sweat dotted his forehead. Merely getting up and dressing had cost him considerable strength.
“Why didn't you call me?”
“You stayed up watching me so long last night. If I woke you again, I feared I'd be scolded before I even failed to reach twenty.”
I took his cup and tested the temperature.
“If you have strength for sweet talk, today's medicine can lose half a qian of huanglian.”
“So sweet words can buy sweeter medicine,” he immediately replied. “I'll remember.”
When we went to the main courtyard to offer tea, the Marquis of Ningyuan, Xie Huaiyue, was pacing the hall.
The carpet's edges had curled beneath his feet.
Seeing his son walk in unaided, he stopped.
“Why didn't you take a sedan? Are you cold? Short of breath?”
“Tingxue Courtyard isn't far. Zhiwei said I should walk.”
His mother, Jiang Yunrou, immediately turned to me, her eyes anxious.
“He really can?”
“Yes. Stop when tired. Rest when breathless. Staying in bed will only weaken him.”
I helped him sit and added, “If you surround him whenever he walks a few steps, he'll become nervous and his breathing will be more unsettled. Give him time to steady himself first.”
Xie Huaiyue had once commanded armies in the Northern Marches and was built like a tiger.
He obediently stepped back twice.
At the head of the room, Old Madam Xie suppressed a smile and pressed a thick red envelope into my hand.
“We'll listen to you. We've worried over him until we've lost all sense. We'll have to trouble you from now on. Huaiyue has already sent someone to ask about your father's case. Treat the illness as an illness. Don't feel indebted to us.”
Jiang Yunrou gave me a storeroom key too.
“This is yours, separate from the medicine expenses. Jewelry, books, helping your family—decide for yourself.”
I accepted without refusing and rose to bow.
“I'll record every expense. I'll manage my own dowry too. If I want to open a women's clinic in the capital later, I hope Mother will make things easier for me.”
An ordinary bride wouldn't dare discuss her own business the moment she entered the household.
But I had to be clear from the start.
Good days depended on mutual understanding, not guessing.
Jiang Yunrou paused, then laughed.
“Make things easier? I'll go with you to choose the shop. There are too few women physicians. Many women are too embarrassed to discuss their ailments. It's a useful, worthy thing.”
A girl peering from behind the screen popped her head out.
“Sister-in-law, can I help at the clinic?”
She was Xie Tingheng's fourteen-year-old sister, Xie Mingzheng, with bright round eyes and more energy than a spring sparrow.
I beckoned her out.
“Memorize the Verse on Medicinal Properties first. Then we'll discuss helping.”
Her face fell by half.
Beside us, Xie Tingheng ate his congee, his eyes full of laughter.
“Mingzheng, she managed me exactly like that yesterday. Accept your fate.”
The family meal was lively.
No one asked when I would produce an heir.
No one made Xie Tingheng's illness my responsibility.
Afterward, Jiang Yunrou had the steward bring two camphorwood chests containing ten years of medical records and prescriptions, all neatly arranged.
I opened the first volume.
As a child, Xie Tingheng had fallen into water one winter and burned with fever for days.
After waking, he suffered constant coughing and wheezing.
At first, prescriptions to open the lungs and resolve retained fluids brought some improvement.
Later, when he coughed blood, a famous physician diagnosed consumption. Treatment gradually shifted toward nourishing yin and reducing internal heat.
The prescriptions grew colder, the tonics heavier with each year.
I read page after page until dark and began to form a preliminary picture.
“Your illness may not be the incurable condition everyone says.”
He stopped writing.
“How certain are you?”
“For now, all I can say is that I see a path.”
“If there's a path, we can walk it. How do we find the next step?”
I pushed a daily log toward him.
“With your help. When you cough, what foods cause bloating, whether you sweat at night, how far you walk before becoming breathless—record it all.”
“You have to contribute to your treatment too, Lord Xie.”
He wrote the first entry in an elegant, steady hand:
Near dawn. Walked to the main courtyard. Slightly breathless. In very good spirits.
At the last words, my own lips curved.
3
The first night without his old prescription, Xie Tingheng slept poorly.
His previous sedative contained cinnabar. The amount was small, but years of use were hardly suitable.
I stopped it and substituted sour jujube seed and fushen.
Late at night, he still tossed and turned.
I lit a small lamp.
“Uncomfortable?”
“My mind is very clear.”
He looked at the canopy.
“Before, after taking medicine, I felt as though I sank underwater. When I woke, I didn't even know what day it was. Tonight, I can hear rain beneath the eaves.”
“Listening to rain is better than being muddled. Bear with it a few days while your body adjusts.”
I placed a warm herbal compress against his back and taught him to breathe slowly.
After several rounds, he suddenly asked, “Does Physician Sang stay up watching every patient?”
“In your dreams. Ordinary patients pay consultation fees on time. Room and board aren't included.”
“What am I, then?”
“A very labor-intensive long-term contract.”
He turned toward me, his eyes gentle and amused in the lamplight.
“I'll try to live a little longer so my wife doesn't make a loss.”
The next day, I changed his prescription.
I used common herbs intended to warm the lungs, resolve phlegm and retained fluids, strengthen digestion, and settle the stomach, all in light doses.
Cheng Yue returned with the medicine and said the shopkeeper had chased him with questions, unable to believe the heir's medicine could be so ordinary.
Hearing that, Xie Huaiyue secretly called me into the corridor.
“Zhiwei, we aren't short of silver. Don't economize if Tingheng can use better medicine.”
“My lord, suitable medicine is good medicine. Old ginseng strengthens qi, but his chest still holds phlegm and fluid, and his digestion is weak. Too much nourishment will only stagnate inside.”
He rubbed his nose.
“I don't understand these things. As long as you're certain.”
“I can be wrong too.”
I looked straight at him.
“We need regular examinations and prescriptions adjusted to his symptoms. If anything is unusual, I'll ask another physician to consult. You may trust me, but don't treat my words as imperial decrees.”
His expression grew serious. He nodded solemnly.
Without any trust from a patient's family, treatment was difficult.
But if they treated the physician as a god, no one would dare intervene when things went wrong.
The Xies would listen and ask questions. That reassured me.
After a few days, his appetite improved first.
The kitchen followed my instructions for shredded-chicken and Chinese-yam congee.
He finished a whole bowl.
Mingzheng stared, then ran straight to the main courtyard.
“Mother! Brother finished! You can see the bottom!”
Soon, both his parents and grandmother arrived.
The three studied the empty bowl for a long time, their eyes growing redder.
Xie Tingheng rubbed his forehead.
“It was only a bowl of congee.”
Jiang Yunrou wiped her eyes.
“You haven't finished a whole bowl of anything since you were twelve.”
I took away the second plate of pastries.
“That's enough today. Your digestion is only beginning to recover. Don't be greedy.”
He looked regretfully at the osmanthus cakes.
His grandmother immediately sided with me.
“Listen to Zhiwei. You're here today thanks to your wife's skill.”
“Grandmother is right,” he replied smoothly. “I'll be sure to honor my wife dutifully from now on.”
Everyone laughed.
I carried the cakes outside, my ears warmed by that promise of dutiful devotion.