Born into Servitude: A Sparrow Nesting on a Cold Branch

#A Bondmaid’s Rise #The Ultimate Sapiosexual #A Clear-Eyed Heroine’s Growth #Career Advancement in Ancient Times

At the Cui residence in Jing’an, the first seventeen years of Hanzhi’s life as a bondmaid read like a precisely kept ledger: her father was a steward of the outer compound, her mother an old servant of the madam, and the best future she could hope for was to marry a fellow servant and carry on the generations-old “respectability” of servitude.

Then her fine handwriting earned her a transfer to the madam’s courtyard, where she began copying “records” that were never meant to see the light of day. Little by little, she began to understand:

· The legitimate wife’s smile concealed calculations about legitimate and illegitimate children.

· The cousin miss’s attentiveness hid her anxiety to marry into a higher station.

· Even the seemingly carefree Third Young Master had a glimmer of resentment in his eyes.