When Nie Huizhu, a talented girl from Jiangnan, discovers a love poem written for someone else in her husband's study, the first crack in the perfect marriage she has worked so hard to build begins to crack. And this is just the prologue - her sister Nie Luozhu eloped late at night to resist the arranged marriage, the poor scholar Zhao Xiaolian, a famous Qinhuai prostitute, spent all her savings to support a poor scholar but married another man after high school, the dignified prefect's wife worshiped Guanyin alone in a secret room... These women who are trapped in deep houses, brothels and ethics seem to live in unrelated worlds.
A scandal about the salt administration scandal that shocked both the government and the public tightly entwined their fate. Huizhu holds a secret account book that can destroy her husband. Luo Zhu's elopement plunges the family into scandal, and Zhao Xiaolian is involved in a dangerous power game. When the storm comes, they must choose: continue to play the role written by the times, or risk everything to break free from the shackles?
This is not a romantic legend of a talented man and a beautiful woman, but a portrait of a group of women seeking a way out in a desperate situation. They formed alliances, schemes, and sacrifices in the dark, and used their own ways to rewrite their arranged destiny. Jealousy and loyalty, cowardice and bravery, selfishness and redemption - the struggles of human nature hundreds of years ago are still hot today.
Open this book and see how they lived for themselves in an era that did not allow women to have desires.
