History PhD student Shen Zhaoning stays up all night working on her dissertation. When she wakes, she has become Shen Zhaoning, the legitimate daughter lying ill in Yong'an Marquis Manor.
Her birth mother died young, her stepmother is cruel, and the second branch of the family is watching hungrily. In the depths of winter, they send her to “recuperate” in a side room beside the woodshed, halve her coal allowance, and serve her watery porridge so thin she can see her reflection in it. In name, she is the legitimate daughter; in truth, she is an abandoned child.
But they don’t know that inside this frail body lives a modern soul who studies the social and economic history of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Starting with a bowl of watery porridge, Shen Zhaoning struggles to survive in a deep household that devours its own. She checks the ledgers, searches for the truth, battles her stepmother, and guards against the second branch, gradually uncovering the mystery of her mother’s death. Nanny Zhou is dead. Concubine Sun is dead. Cuiping is dead. Old Madam Fang is dead. Everyone who knew what happened back then is being silenced, one after another.
Who is the old woman wearing the silver bracelet engraved with lotus flowers? Who is the veiled woman watching everything from the shadows? And who is the enemy lurking in the deepest darkness?
On the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month, snow falls heavily. Wearing a bright red wedding gown, Shen Zhaoning enters the Sun family’s lair. Among her bridal gifts is the old woman who caused her mother’s death. On her wedding night, the old woman kneels before her and shakily says,
“Miss, I was forced to do it…”
Before she can finish, black blood spills from her mouth, and she collapses to the floor.
Someone has just left through the crack in the door.
