Waiting for Your Return in the Depth of Spring

On the day she was born, her mother died in childbirth. Fifteen years later, Shen Qingyi learned all the skills of survival in the cracks of the Shen family's back house - hiding clumsiness, forbearance, practicing calligraphy with water, and hiding embroidery skills under the poorest stitches. Her aunt regarded her as a thorn in her side, and the sisters teamed up to set up a scheme to destroy her reputation. Her only talisman was a copybook of the "Ling Fei Sutra" left by her biological mother. It wasn't until that spring that a letter of proposal from the Marquis of Jingchuan was delivered to the Shen family. Everyone thought this was the concubine's luck in reaching a high branch. No one knew that Lu Chengan, the second son of the Hou family, had met her seven years ago - under the old locust tree in the back garden of Shen's house in Yuhang, a thin girl secretly burned incense to her late mother and then gave him a piece of sesame candy. "I need a wife and you need a supporter. We are cousins and know each other well." A marriage that looked like a deal brought her from the Shen family in Jiangnan to a noble family in the capital. The scrutiny of the mother-in-law, the calculations of the sisters-in-law, the provocation of the concubine, the turmoil in the court - the water in the Hou Mansion is ten times deeper than that of the Shen family. And what she has to do is far more than just survive. The death of my biological mother was not an accident. That prescription from sixteen years ago, that missing Wen Po, that pile of letters buried under the old locust tree - every layer of the truth is revealed, one step closer to the abyss. "I used to just want to live. Now, I want justice." From the boudoir in the south of the Yangtze River to the noble family in the capital, from hiding the edge to playing chess. This is the diary of a concubine's life in the Ming Dynasty, and it is also a relationship that begins with a transaction and ends with her death. Spring is deep and it's time to return.