Shen Zhaoning died once. At twenty-eight, with a white silk cord around her neck, no one stood up for her. Reborn on her wedding night, she set down her wine cup. “I want to see the estate’s accounts now.” In the corner, the inspector, Lu Zhi, paused with his brush. The woman he had dreamed of for four years had been her all along. Over the next three years, she untangled thirty-seven cases of fraudulent accounts, put the district-field system to the test, and made the estate the richest in the land. On the day she sought a divorce, Lu Zhi took from his sleeve the ear of wheat he had kept for four years. “I picked this in the second year of Yongchang.” She stared at him. “So it was you.”
She was no one’s princess consort. She was Shen, an adviser to the fief of Jingzhou, and the first woman in the dynasty to be listed among its distinguished officials without holding an official rank.
