Ten Years of Revenge, Yet No One Knows She's the Last Daughter of the Shen Family

When Shen Zhaoning was twelve, she hid in a dry well, listening to the clash of swords, the cries, and the roar of the fire outside. She waited until dawn.

All 317 members of the Shen family were gone in a single night. The court accused them of treason, but Shen Zhaoning knew her father had not rebelled. Neither had her eldest uncle. Not one of the more than three hundred members of the Shen family had rebelled. They were simply too rich, wealthy enough to account for a fifth of the court's annual income; too powerful, powerful enough to keep the Prince Regent awake at night. The salt merchants paid three hundred thousand taels, and the Shanxi merchants paid another three hundred thousand. The Transport Commissioner sealed off the roads, the Vice Minister of Revenue swallowed the family's estate, and a general from the Capital Garrisons brought in his troops. And Shen's third son, her own third uncle, handed over the family's defense plans and account books.

Ten years later, a new silk shop opened by the Drum Tower in the capital. It was called Su's. Its owner was a young woman with the surname Su and the given name Heng. She sold only genuine goods and treated everyone with warmth and courtesy. No one knew that her other name was Shen Zhaoning. For ten years, she had honed herself into a blade: a prodigious memory for accounts, a keen mind for commerce, expertise in poisons and criminal law, and a smiling face that made everyone think she was “a good person.” She did not want to kill her enemies with a single stroke. She wanted to cut them down one slice at a time, making them watch as they lost everything they had, their money, their businesses, their reputations, and their lives, one by one.

This was a long revenge. No love, no mercy, no turning back. Just a girl who had crawled out of a dry well, gritting her teeth as she crossed her enemies' names off the list one by one.