The Langhua Heiress's Stratagem

Shen Qingli, daughter of a respected family in Suzhou, lost her entire family when powerful ministers had them killed for her father’s investigation into a major canal-transport case. Carrying the burden of her family’s blood feud and half a Qingluan jade pendant, she heads alone to the capital and seeks refuge at the Yongning Marquis’s residence, where she struggles to survive as a distant orphaned relative. In the marquis’s sprawling household and the capital’s circles of power, she conceals her talents and keeps a low profile, navigating a severe matriarch, an arrogant concubine, and noblewomen of every sort, while quietly weaving an intelligence network within the confines of the estate. Her extraordinary intelligence and resilient spirit soon draw the attention of the marquis’s heir, Lu Mingyuan, the mysterious strategist Xiao Che, and even the imperial family. From a helpless orphan at everyone’s mercy, she gradually grows into the one who moves the pieces. A raging storm over the dark secrets of canal transport, factional strife at court, and an old blood feud is gathering, its currents stirred by her arrival…