[A cold, ruthless opera star × A clear-eyed heiress from an illustrious family], mutual salvation, two formidable figures in a chaotic age.
They first met on a rainy night, when he handed her an invitation.
Shen Weixi was Beiping’s most dazzling daughter of the Shen family. She had returned from studying abroad, well-read and full of learning, only to become a bargaining chip in her father’s political schemes.
An anonymous letter exposed her fiancé’s horrifying old crime. A forced marriage arranged by her family pushed her to the brink.
With nowhere else to turn, she remembered the opera performer Jiang Buwu backstage at Guanghe Theater, the man with frost and snow in his eyes.
He said only, “Miss Shen, I’m willing to work with you. But can you afford the price?”
Everyone thought Jiang Buwu was just an opera performer.
The powerful courted him for his looks and coveted his voice.
No one knew that while he sang onstage, he laid his schemes; as his long sleeves fluttered, he secretly passed on intelligence. Beneath his makeup was another face.
Until the day he tore off his disguise in full view of the crowd to protect Shen Weixi.
With a bullet chambered, he smiled at the horrified powerful men gathered around him and said, “For my next act, I’ll perform Bloodbath at the Hall.”
Only then did Shen Weixi realize:
The token he had given her as a pledge of love could command half the underground forces in the north.
Every line from the opera he had taught her was a top-secret coded order.
The future he promised was not an elopement, but a chance to join forces and carve out a way to survive on the chessboard of this chaotic age.
“Jiang Buwu,” she asked softly at a smoke-filled dawn, gripping the gun he had given her, “if this play is destined to end in tragedy, will you still perform it?”
He wiped the blood from her cheek, his gaze as burning as when they first met.
“For you, I’ll cross this boundless sea of suffering, whatever the ending.”
