The World of Medicine and Poison

The World of Medicine and Poison is an urban supernatural novel by the web author Watermelon Huang. It was serialized under the title "Entry for the Fifth Season of the 2014 Star Creation Awards" and runs to roughly 1.44 million characters across more than 530 chapters. Its core premise is "a peerless poison master reborn in the modern age": the protagonist returns to the contemporary city carrying his past-life mastery of poison and his knowledge of medicine, and makes his way anew through the business world, the workplace, and the networks of human relations. The book's guiding idea is "of all things, none is as poisonous as the human heart." On one hand the protagonist heals the sick and saves lives, establishing himself through compassion; on the other, he uses poison to punish evildoers whom law and morality cannot restrain, creating a two-stranded narrative of "medicine to show compassion, poison to speak justice." The story opens in everyday city life and unfolds around the herbal medicine market, business rivalries, the games of the powerful, and an animal legion, weaving in such character threads as Liu Fei, Yang Bingying, and the Liu family, gradually pushing the protagonist onto a larger stage and closing with a chapter titled "Happy Birthday." The work bears the hallmarks of online urban supernatural fiction: a clear cheat ability, brisk pacing, and short chapters, along with depictions of traditional Chinese medicine and ordinary city life. It is one of the representative works of the popular "dual cultivation of medicine and poison" type set in a modern city.