Five Blessings at the Door: The Imperial Appointed Female Judge

She was young and tender, and though she was bold in word and deed, she was timid and unassuming, sometimes doing things that astonished everyone.

She said, “Mother, you’re so good to me. Of your five daughters, you’ve always doted most on the kind and generous ones. The one you forget most is me!”

She said, “I’m the unmarried daughter of the Li family. I’ll go with Mother to the hall. If anyone is to be beaten with a rod, let Haode take the punishment alone.”

She heard that Shen Huizhao had argued in court for the death sentence for her eldest sister’s husband, merely because he had accused his father on his mother’s behalf.

She learned that Shen Huizhao was handling the case and waited outside the Kaifeng Prefecture’s public offices. Wearing a veiled hat and smearing her face, she finally put her troubled heart at ease.

Later, she said to someone, “I’d hoped that my good brother-in-law would find me a match. And now the one who’s been temporarily assigned to Kaifeng Prefecture is Shen Huizhao himself!”