A Romance Between Two Beauties: The Top Scholar and the Courtesan

Two female leads, devoted to each other, not an ABO story She was the only survivor of the Shen family. Twelve years ago, all 137 members of the family perished in a sea of flames. Her father’s closest friend rescued her when she was seven. From then on, the world had no daughter of the Shen family, only Shen Gongzi, a young man traveling to the capital to sit the imperial examinations. Her master sighed and asked if she had made up her mind. She nodded and drank the bowl of medicine that would end her fertility. From that day on, she was only Shen Zhao, courtesy name Ziyu, a provincial graduate of the seventeenth year of Chengping. The following year, she would sit the metropolitan examination, then enter the court, become an official, clear her family’s name, and take revenge. She had followed this path without hesitation for twelve years, until one night when someone dragged her to the Inviting Moon Pavilion to see its most celebrated courtesan. Amid the uproar, a woman named Yun Yao looked at her from across the crowd. And Yun Yao herself was also walking a path of no return. Seven years ago, her father was unjustly imprisoned. Alone, she knocked on the back door of the Inviting Moon Pavilion. From then on, being a courtesan who entertained but did not sell herself was both her identity and her weapon. In the brothel, songs and laughter filled every night, and when the drink was flowing, the powerful could hardly keep their secrets to themselves. She sold her talents, not her body, all for the chance to learn one name. Their paths should never have crossed, yet they pressed on through the same dark alley. One hid her womanhood beneath a man’s clothes. The other concealed a heart bent on revenge behind the identity of a courtesan. That night, Yun Yao’s fingertips came to rest over Shen Zhao’s heart, separated by clothing and twelve years of wind and snow. “Gongzi,” she whispered, “your heart is beating so fast.” She did not know that it was the sudden skipped beat of one traveler hearing another’s footsteps on the same road.