When Jiang Yuejian opened her eyes, her ears were filled with the piercing, rhythmic knocking of a wooden temple drum.
Tok. Tok. Tok...
She moved her neck and found herself slumped over a cold stone table. Several yellowed scripture scrolls lay open before her, and the air smelled of cheap sandalwood mixed with mildew.
“Tch.” Jiang Yuejian frowned. For someone accustomed to sterile operating rooms, these sanitary conditions made her temples throb.
Before she had finished absorbing the memories of the body's original owner, a shrill voice exploded beside her.
“Jiang Yuejian! How can you sleep at a time like this? His Highness's ‘divine punishment’ has struck again! If anything happens to him here tonight, every last one of us at Shangqing Temple will be off to meet the Three Pure Ones!”
Jiang Yuejian straightened and saw a middle-aged Daoist practically hopping with panic. His eyes were ringed with blue, his complexion dull, and even his breath carried the acrid odor of heavy-metal poisoning.
Her clinical radar switched on instantly. She gave him a cool once-over. “Stop jumping. That won't save him. And have you been getting a bitter taste in your mouth and a dull ache under your ribs lately? Cut back on those red pills full of lead and mercury. Your liver is about to go on strike.”
The older Daoist stared. “You... what nonsense are you talking?”
Jiang Yuejian ignored him. Following the original owner's memories, she was already examining her hands. Slender, but with strong joints and neatly trimmed, clean nails. Good. Very surgeon-like.
She rose and pushed open the rickety wooden door with a creak.
Before her lay one small corner of the flourishing Tang empire: the rear courtyard of Shangqing Temple.
But to Jiang Yuejian, this was hardly an immortal paradise. It was an enormous, ambulatory culture medium for chronic disease.
The young novice who swept the floors was carrying tea, his feet turned outward as he walked—clearly heading toward an enlarged prostate. And that senior disciple who claimed to have “attained the Way,” with his sallow face and murky eyes, was undoubtedly a case of hydronephrosis waiting to happen after years of drinking dirty well water.
Jiang Yuejian took a deep breath, then immediately covered her nose and mouth in disgust.
“Tea leaves, salt, shredded ginger... and mutton fat?” Looking at the pot of “Tang-style boiled tea” bubbling on a stove in the distance, she felt her stomach churn. “How do these Tang people stomach something so high in oxalates and uric acid? No wonder everyone has stones.”
Jiang Yuejian gave a cold laugh. “If Lu Yu saw you mistreating tea like this, he'd be furious enough to climb out of his grave. Real tea is about returning to its natural, clean bitterness, not making some kitchen-sink stew. You're not savoring tea. You're overloading your kidneys.”
Just then, heavy, disorderly footsteps sounded from the front hall.
Several black-clad guards hurried into the courtyard carrying a stretcher. The man on it wore sumptuous embroidered robes, yet he was curled up like a boiled shrimp.
Jiang Yuejian spotted him immediately.
Li Ce. The prince regent of the Tang empire, second only to the emperor—and currently in such a state that dignity was the least of his concerns.
She approached. The guard commander instantly drew the saber at his waist halfway from its sheath. “Insolence! Stand back!”
Jiang Yuejian did not so much as raise an eyelid. Her cool gaze rested on Li Ce's face for three seconds.
A bluish-purple complexion. Cold sweat pouring off him. Sheer willpower keeping him from groaning. But what she found most intolerable was the enormous glass ornament hanging at his waist: intricately carved, apparently loaded with lead, and full of crevices just waiting to collect grime.
“So this is your all-powerful prince?” Jiang Yuejian tucked her hands into the wide sleeves of her Daoist robes. Her tone carried all the disdain of a doctor facing an uncooperative patient. “He's not dead yet. No need to rush to put a blade to my neck. Too much tea and those blasted ‘immortality pills’ have wrecked his kidneys. A stone's blocking the plumbing, that's all.”
Through the agony, Li Ce struggled to open his eyes. His vision was blurred. All he could make out was a young woman in white Daoist robes.
She had a delicate, attractive face, but there was no reverence in her eyes. No admiration. Not even fear.
That look... it was as though she were inspecting a pile of broken parts.
“Save... save me...” Li Ce forced the words through his teeth.
Jiang Yuejian bent down, her nose almost brushing his cheek. Instead of offering gentle reassurance, she frowned and muttered:
“Tch. Full of stones, and handsome too. What a waste of good hardware.”
Then she turned and snapped at the dumbfounded guards.
“Get him inside, and put out that stove full of tea sludge! Bring me boiled water—boiled three times and filtered! If anyone gives him another mouthful of that salty, oily tea, I'll send them straight to the queue for the underworld!”
Staring at this thoroughly unimpressed woman, Li Ce felt a sense of absurdity unlike anything he had ever known.
He was a prince of the blood. Everyone trod on eggshells around him. Yet this woman was actually looking down on him?
On his body—the body of the “most handsome man in all of Tang”?