On the night of the Lantern Festival, a spooked horse charged through West Market in Chang'an, trampling the lanterns lining the street.
Su Wantang fell into the muddy water. The old apricot-red cloak she wore was left with a black hoofprint. The nobleman on horseback casually pulled the jade pendant from his waist and tossed it to her, his voice as indifferent as if he were shooing away a beggar. “Take this as compensation.” She picked up the pendant, wiped the mud off on her sleeve, and thanked him with a smile.
Twenty taels of silver. Enough to keep the shop running for a month.
She thought it was just an accidental mishap, never knowing that the man named Pei Heng would remember her name from that day on.
Su Wantang was the proprietress of a small silk shop in East Market. Her father had died young, and her mother was frail. From the age of fourteen, she had learned to keep the books, find suppliers, and hold her family together. Pei Heng was a notorious troublemaker in the capital, the legitimate second son of the Zhongshu Ling's household. He had never failed to get what he wanted. He assumed Su Wantang would bow and yield to power like everyone else.
But she refused.
It was an uneven contest: on one side, a powerful young noble who could turn the world upside down; on the other, a merchant's daughter gritting her teeth and standing her ground. He cut off her suppliers, stole her business, and drove her into a corner. Yet she managed to reach his mother, trading the returned jade pendant for a chance to catch her breath. From Chang'an to Jiangnan, from a little shop to the renowned Cloud Brocade House, Su Wantang spent half her life proving one thing: no one else got to decide her fate.
And Pei Heng, who had once ridden roughshod over the lanterns, arrogant and untouchable, also shed his vanity through the trials of time. When they met again at a canal pier in Jiangnan, the wastrel of old had become a steadfast general, and she was no longer a shopkeeper forced to depend on others.
