Shen Lingwei spent fifteen years as the legitimate daughter of the Duke's residence, only to be told one day that she was a fake.
Everyone in the capital watched, eager to laugh at the impostor who had taken the real daughter's place. She left without taking so much as a single tile.
Everyone expected her to weep and beg to return to the noble household, but no one knew that...
The bookkeeper at the teahouse on East Street was a prodigy she had personally trained. The rising star of the Ministry of Justice kept the law books she had annotated on his desk. Even the Princess Royal's residence had a little side gate reserved just for her.
Back at the ruined Marquis's residence, she looked at her grandmother coughing up blood and her timid siblings, then smiled as she dipped an embroidered handkerchief into a dye vat. “The rouge shop opening tomorrow should be called Phoenix Returns to Its Nest.”
Gu Yanshi watched the girl turn the world upside down from behind a screen.
People laughed that he was marrying a fake heiress to bring good fortune, unaware that this marriage was a trap he had woven with his own hands.
“Miss Shen,” he coughed up a streak of blood onto his handkerchief. “The second branch of the Gu family plans to use you to poison the Marquis's residence.”
By the flickering candlelight, Shen Lingwei poured the poisoned wine over an orchid. “What a coincidence. I've been looking for an excuse to raid the Imperial Pharmacy.”
