In a year of great famine, a maid was worth only three steamed buns, but Old Man Jiang could sell his three daughters for a fortune.
His eldest daughter was sent to a prince’s household to serve as a “flesh screen,” forced to stand naked in the freezing winter wind. Before three months had passed, she threw herself into a well.
His second daughter was sold to a thug who used her in a honey trap. Within six months, she died violently in the street, without even a whole set of clothes left behind.
When it was the third daughter, Jiang Li, Old Man Jiang rubbed his hands together, baring his yellow teeth. “This girl is the prettiest, so she’ll fetch the highest price. Eunuch Liu loves little girls!”
The night he sat by the kang bed, counting his silver,
Jiang Li quietly knocked on Eunuch Liu’s door.
“Grandfather, I’ll sell my father to you for nothing. I only ask that you let him become your dutiful son and inherit your profession.”
The old eunuch narrowed his eyes as he sized up the skinny girl with her bright, clear gaze, then suddenly laughed.
“Fine. Tomorrow, your father will be castrated and sent into the palace.”
The next day, while Old Man Jiang was still dreaming of counting money, several palace eunuchs dragged him out of the house.
He screamed and struggled, but all he saw was Jiang Li standing quietly beneath a withered jujube tree. Like a little beast, she leapt over the courtyard wall and ran.
Later, the world fell into chaos, and blood flowed both within and beyond the palace walls.
No one could have imagined that the little girl her own father had sold off would, step by step, shatter the brutal rules and walk across mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Years later, a new dynasty was founded, and an empress took the throne.
Beneath the imperial seat, the powerful eunuch Liu and his adopted son, Jiang Shunzhong, prostrated themselves respectfully.
From behind the beaded curtain, the empress smiled.
“Eunuch Liu, Eunuch Jiang, it’s been a long time.”
Jiang Shunzhong looked up,
and nearly died of shock.
Th-this was Jiang Li, the girl Eunuch Liu had caught and killed by throwing her into the river all those years ago!
Only then did the world realize that from the moment she sold her father, she had already been moving the pieces on the board.
