Ye Zhiqiu is twenty-four years old and unmarried.
It's not that I can't get married - I had an engagement when I was eighteen, but the other party regretted it; when I was twenty, I had another engagement, but then backed out. The news of two broken engagements spread throughout the city, and coupled with the three years of keeping her mother filial piety, the city's meaning was very clear: this daughter of the Ye family is dead.
On the twenty-third of the twelfth lunar month, her father called her into the ancestral hall. Before the stick of sandalwood was burned, she was sent out of the Ye family.
She took away not much: a string of plain silver beads, an account she knew by heart, and a secret that no one knew.
Lu Yan was twenty-eight years old, a young minister from Taipu Temple, and was unmarried. Everyone in the court said that he was from a humble family and had a bright future.
No one knows his real name is Song. Fifteen years ago, his mother died in Jialandu, Nanpu.
It took him ten years to climb to this position, not to become an official.
A marriage certificate binds two people who have their own thoughts together. He wants her account books and connections, and she wants his official status and protection. The four chains were tied tightly, so no one could leave.
This is not a marriage, but a game of chess.
On the chessboard are placed a salt guide, the throne, an old case, and an anonymous letter from an unknown source.
The question is, when did the chess players become chess pieces?
