I Was Born to Be a Son-in-Law

[Not a power fantasy + alternate history + youthful lives across two eras + slow burn + coming of age + court politics + power struggles] This is a story about a group of people coming together like a single flame in a cold, cruel world. His mother, Meng Chu Wei, paved the way for him with four thousand li of mountains and rivers; His benefactor, Su Cheng Dao, guarded his reputation in silence; His wife, Lu Yun Xi, spent half her life showing fearless courage to clear his name; Shi Dao An lived out his faith to the very end; Nie Wu Ji gave his life to carve into him the question, “Why must the world be this way?” And Shen Shao An himself, with the backbone of a sixteen-year-old, forged the kindness of all these people into a sword not to overthrow the world, but to bring even an inch of light to it. Is it a tragedy? He loses his mother, wanders from place to place, and is forced to grow up too soon. Its foundation is bitter. Is it a power fantasy? A commoner shakes the great clans, an orphan wins the hand of a noblewoman, a debate defeats a revered monk, and the court is thrown into turmoil. On the surface, it has all the thrills. But what it truly wants to explore is this: “How can those who have been wronged choose not to wrong others?” This is a story threaded through with love from beginning to end. Not the narrow love between a man and a woman, but a mother's love for her son, a wife's love for her husband, a hero's love of justice, a monk's love for all living beings, an emperor's love for a kindred spirit, and one person's love for the strangers who share this land.