The Clouds Know Not the Sunken Boat's Longing

Everyone in the capital knows that Jiang Yunzhou, the young heir of the Yongning Marquis’s residence, is a sickly sort, panting every three steps and coughing every five. He rarely leaves home, has an eccentric temperament, and almost no friends. But no one knows that the frail, sickly “him” is actually a “her.” By day, she is the Jiang family’s Third Young Master, pale and weak, with barely enough strength to say more than a few words. When night falls, she changes into dark clothes, takes up a bamboo-and-jade iron book, and becomes the dreaded Lord of Jade Bamboo. The Bamboo-and-Jade Iron Book records the names of evildoers across the land. Anyone whose name appears in it is doomed to die. In that same capital, another curious tale is the talk of the town: Wen Langyun, the eldest princess of the Great Yong Dynasty, is twenty-one, beautiful as a celestial being, and of exalted status, yet no one dares marry her. Three years ago, suitors crowded her doorstep. Three years later, everyone avoids her. The reason is simple: all five men who were betrothed to her died violent, unusual deaths, not one surviving. Her reputation as a husband-killer has spread throughout the court, but the eldest princess seems not to care at all, living freely and happily as before. What she has never explained is that those dead fiancés were all men marked for death, carefully selected from the Bamboo-and-Jade Iron Book. She chose one, and Lord of Jade Bamboo killed him. It was a convenient bargain for her. After all, besides being the eldest princess, she is also the mysterious mastermind behind Jinling Pavilion, the most secretive intelligence network in the martial world, known as the Star of Wuxiang, who “knows everything there is to know.” A young female heir who cannot show her face, and an eldest princess who has seen five fiancés die. Both are pretending. Both are pawns.