In the fifteenth year of the Republic, Yao Tianci, the young daughter of the mayor, was in the prime of her youth. Born into a prominent family and excelling in her studies, she was deeply in love with Lin Haoxuan, the son of an official. Her plans to study abroad were already laid. A Western mirror her father had brought back from France reflected her lovely face and bright future. Everything was as beautiful as a fleeting reflection of flowers in water.
Then came the thunderbolt: her father, Yao Liming, died suddenly in a foreign land, shattering her world in an instant. Her family fell into decline, her dream of studying abroad was crushed, and she learned how cruel the world could be. Her former lover turned away and climbed toward a more advantageous match. Just as Yao Tianci and her mother sank into despair, alone and helpless, Yuan Aiqun, a driver for the Huayang Bank, took advantage of their situation with his honest, diligent demeanor and won her mother’s trust. Then, one rainy night on the way home, he used despicable means to force himself on the defenseless Yao Tianci.
To preserve her father’s good name and spare her mother’s reputation, Yao Tianci was forced to swallow her humiliation and marry the beast. After the wedding, Yuan Aiqun dropped his disguise. He was greedy and crude. Even more devastatingly, Yao Tianci discovered that he was the bank president’s fixer in a filthy exchange of power and sex, tasked with luring and coercing young female employees into serving the president’s lust. Once the darling of heaven, she became the wife of a demon and, more ironically still, a shameless cover for this sordid chain of abuse.
When irrefutable evidence of Yuan Aiqun’s adultery and vile conduct came to light, and her request for a divorce was met with an explicit death threat, the last trace of weakness in Yao Tianci’s eyes burned away. The beauty in the mirror was no longer a delicate flower crushed by fate, but a woman tempered into a flame of vengeance. She would no longer keep silent or resign herself to her lot! Even if the road ahead led to an abyss, she would bare her fangs and make herself a blade, piercing through a world that was gilded on the outside and filthy within, and dragging into the depths those demons who had pulled her into hell.
