Imperial Physician's Notes: Fading Lamp of Yingtai

In the autumn of the twenty-fourth year of the Guangxu reign, Chen Lianfang, a renowned physician from Jiangnan, is summoned by imperial decree to the palace to treat illness. He comes only to save lives, yet stumbles upon the deepest poison plot within the inner palace: the water source of Yingtai has been laced with arsenic, a plain silver hairpin conceals a treasonous secret letter, and an eighteen-character prophecy from the cold palace points to a chess game ten years in the making. Blood Bat assassins, an underground imperial city, secret tunnels along dark rivers—faction after faction enters the stage, and he is pushed step by step from a needle-wielding doctor to a player of the game. Behind every prescription lies a killing move capable of overturning the court. When the ending is revealed, all foreshadowing lands at once. — Description from novelcodex.org