The Young Marshal's Captive Beauty

When Mu Yu was three, her mother ran away with an actor. After that, Mu Yu never set foot outside the family estate again.

Her father, Mu Zhennan, began taking concubines in a frenzy. Every one of his five concubines resembled her mother: her eyes, her mouth, her very essence, even the way she carried herself. He was looking for a substitute, the shadow of the woman who had run away.

And Mu Yu was the greatest substitute of all, because she grew more and more like her mother.

Her father's gaze changed. He no longer looked at her like a father looking at his daughter, but like a man looking at a woman. Her eldest brother's gaze changed, too, and so did her second brother's. They were all looking through her at someone else.

She was kept inside the compound, wearing qipaos in her mother's favorite colors and learning the music, chess, calligraphy, and painting her mother had excelled at.

She was the legitimate daughter of the family, yet she wasn't allowed to read a single book or step outside a single door. She was a living statue, a breathing stand-in, a collectible locked in a gilded cage.

At fifteen, during her father's birthday banquet, a strange man saw her from across the garden.

One glance was enough for her to know he was different from everyone else. He looked at her and saw her. He wasn't seeing her mother's shadow or anyone else's stand-in. He was looking at her: Mu Yuxin.

But that glance earned her a brutal beating from her father.

“Why did you show your face? Why did you let another man see you?”

As the whip came down, she curled up in the dark room, covered in blood, yet clearer-headed than ever.

She hated this face. She hated this family. She hated every man who looked through her to see someone else.

She would escape.

Even if she died out there, it would be better than living as someone else's shadow.