In the bitter depths of winter during the Republic of China era, heavy snow sealed off the courtyard on the day Shen Jianhong was born. She was immediately branded a “burden” by the Shen family. In an age when women’s status was as fragile as a cicada’s wing, her mother and she were cast into the woodshed and cruelly mistreated. To save her gravely ill mother, Shen Jianhong was forced to become a concubine to a rich landowner’s foolish son. On her wedding day, however, her grandmother cut off her mother’s medicine, and she died a miserable death. Filled with hatred, Shen Jianhong swore to make the Shen family pay for their blood debt and to fight the unjust world around her. With no way out, she turned her gaze to Jiang Sinian, the young marshal of a powerful military governor’s household. Would she use his influence to take revenge, or find a way to survive against all odds? Could she find a rainbow of her own in the darkness?
