In the fifteenth year of Lanyuan, Jinzhou salt merchant Shen Mingxuan was charged overnight with "colluding with bandit merchants and smuggling salt". His property was confiscated and he was imprisoned. The sixteen-year-old concubine Shen Zhiwei stood behind the hanging flower door and listened to the sound of the iron chain on her father's hand dragging across the bluestone. She did not cry - she knew that her father had not broken the law, but had lost. Lose to those who make the rules.
From that night in Jinzhou Prison, counting mold spots and waiting for dawn, she decided not to be a forgotten chess piece. With a tattered business book and only her savings, she traveled from Jiangling to the capital. Using the account book as a knife and pen and ink as a sword, she walked step by step into the capital city that could determine the honor and disgrace of countless lives and deaths.
She met the businessman who kept his promise, the dismissed censor, the failed candidate, the runaway daughter, and the old man who had been running a newspaper for thirty years. They told her: If you fight alone, you lose; if you fight as a group, you are not afraid of losing.
It will always be bright. But before daybreak, you have to learn to walk in the dark.
This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.
