During the Yongsheng era of the Great Xia Dynasty, Lin Xiaoqian is born in a poor family in the squalid alleys of the capital. Her family favors boys over girls, and she struggles to survive her drunken, gambling father’s beatings, her sharp-tongued mother’s scolding, and her younger brother’s false accusations. At thirteen, her gambling-addict father sells her to the Yongchang Marquis’s Estate for twenty taels of silver. She becomes the personal maid of the capricious young lady Li Yuxin, and from then on endures slaps, kneeling punishments, and wanton abuse day after day.
Her fate changes at the stone bridge west of the city. She accidentally falls into the water and is rescued by a young man in white, Zhao Chuan. That brief moment of warmth becomes the only star in her long, cold nights. She does not know that the young man is the eldest son of the Duke of Zhenguo, betrothed to the marquis’s daughter, and that he too is walking on thin ice amid his stepmother’s schemes.
Several years later, the Duke’s family falls into decline. The marquis’s household resorts to swapping one person for another and orders Xiaoqian to take the bride’s place. Beneath the red wedding candles, as her veil is lifted, the girl who once fell into the water and the man who saved her meet eyes. Two wounded souls recognize each other on a wedding night brought about by lies. He vows to protect her for the rest of her life and teaches her to read and write; when his family casts him out, she uses her quick wits to help them find a way to survive.
After scouring ancient books and conducting a hundred experiments, they finally restore the lost art of colored-glass making. Their “Fated Glass Workshop” becomes famous throughout the capital, and the once-lowly maid becomes a legendary glassmaker. When he places first in the imperial examinations, she stands beside him in a phoenix coronet and embroidered wedding robes. Everyone who once looked down on her must now look up to her. Her birth parents come with her brother to claim her? Ten thousand taels of silver end all ties. Later, when the Li family of the marquis’s estate falls into ruin and is arrested, its members end up living on the streets. When her former mistress begs for help, she welcomes them with a smile, but the household’s pecking order has long since been turned upside down.
From the squalid alleys of the marketplace to the marquis’s grand estate, from a maid forced into marriage to the owner of a glass workshop, she ultimately becomes the wife of the top-scoring scholar.
The plot is not bad, reflecting the old society's secular concept of favoring boys over girls. The heroine was not favored by her parents since she was a child, and she had no happiness throughout her childhood. I hope that the heroine can change her destiny in the later stages of the plot! Like a thumbs up