Her father was wrongfully imprisoned, her mother died of illness, and at twenty-four, Qin Zhaoning was left to run a border-town post station on the verge of bankruptcy. Armed with nothing but an abacus and a string of keys, she held on for three whole years.
She thought that if she could just get through the ten days the guild had given her to repay its debts, she could save Springdeep Station, the one thing her father had left her.
Then came a rainy night.
A badly wounded military courier collapsed outside her door, leaving behind an express letter meant for a dead man.
It read: “For Li Huaizhong, at the old North River crossing.”
But Li Huaizhong had died three years earlier, in the wake of the case that ruined her father.
With the city gates sealed, the patrol camp conducting inspections, and the transport guild closing in at every turn, Qin Zhaoning is forced to travel with Pei Yanchuan, a medicine merchant of mysterious origins. Following the detour markers, old post-station maps, and half a ledger her father left behind, they set out along a hidden road through the borderlands, one absent from every official record.
Someone used Springdeep Station’s name to smuggle military weapons. Someone else used forged and genuine official seals to turn right and wrong upside down. And three years ago, someone had already laid a road for her with no way out.
Pei Yanchuan says he owes Qin Shoucheng a life.
Qin Zhaoning doesn’t believe him.
She knows only that until her father’s case is resolved, the lights at Springdeep Station must not go out.
This time, she won’t wait for anyone to clear a path for her.
She’ll find the post road someone erased, inch by inch, with her own hands.
