Reaching for the Stars

Tong Anyi was an adopted daughter the Tong family had taken in. They were merchants, wealthy enough, but merchants ranked at the bottom of the social order, beneath scholars, farmers, and artisans. Master Tong was desperately trying to send his sons to the capital to take the imperial examinations. Madam Tong went to great lengths to curry favor with a noble relative by marriage on her mother’s side, then took her three daughters to the capital to seek advantageous matches. For her eldest daughter, Madam Tong chose a young illegitimate son from a noble family. For her second daughter, she chose a descendant of a general’s household. For Tong Anyi, she picked the position of favored concubine to the eldest young master of the Marquis’s household. She said, “Anyi, you’re adopted, and your status can’t compare with your two sisters’. The only thing you have to offer is your face. If the young master of the Marquis’s household takes you into his inner quarters, that would be a blessing for you.” What she really meant was that after raising Tong Anyi for more than ten years, it was time for her to repay the Tong family by securing their wealth and honor. The Tong family had not treated her especially well, but neither had they treated her badly. To repay them for raising her, on a rainy night Tong Anyi wore a light dress and fainted into a coldly scented embrace on the path the eldest young master of the Marquis’s household was bound to take back to his room. After that, the young master of the Marquis’s household would sometimes take her out of the residence, and he even bought her a house outside. Tong Anyi understood: her status was too low to become a favored concubine, so she could only be his mistress. Being a mistress was fine too. She had more money than she could spend, could sleep until late morning, and did not have to put up with the principal wife’s attitude. It was a comfortable life. But just as the Tong family’s two daughters married into prominent households and mocked her sarcastically at every banquet, while the capital gossiped that adopted daughter Tong Anyi was so lowly and base that she was happy to be a man’s mistress, an imperial decree arrived. She entered the palace and was made a Noble Consort. Only after entering the palace and meeting the emperor, always distant and cold as an immortal but seemingly a different person in bed, did she realize the truth. On that rainy night, she had thrown herself into the wrong man’s arms. No wonder he always bit her when she called him Brother Pei at night. On the night she was made a consort, beneath the warm golden canopy, he held her close and murmured in her ear, “If you’re going to climb, reach for the highest branch. That’s the only way I can protect you.”