Ten years ago, Shen Lie, the Marquis of Loyalty and Bravery, was framed for treason, and all seventy-three members of the Shen household were slaughtered in a single night. Shen Yao was the only survivor. Taking the alias Shen Jin, she opened a shop called Ember Tea House at the end of Vermilion Bird Street.
Selling tea was a pretense. What she really sold was information. Waiting for customers was a pretense, too. She was really waiting for her enemy.
But the one who came was Gu Pingsheng, the son of the chief judge in her family's case, now a vice minister of the Ministry of Justice.
He should have been a dead man at her hands, yet instead he offered her a key. “I'll investigate my father's crimes for you.”
From the truth hidden in a secret chamber to confrontations at court, from a pursuit through an abandoned kiln to the assassination of a corrupt courtier in the palace.
She is an ember that survived the flames. He is a prisoner who has spent half his life seeking redemption.
Though divided by a sea of blood and hatred, they insist on stealing a little “Pingsheng” for themselves in this troubled age.
This is a story about revenge and forgiveness, and about two fools kindling a fire again amid the ashes. (The protagonists' names are entirely unrelated.)
