Feng Mu, the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Yong'an in the State of Chen, was hunted down by her enemies during the Great Famine eighteen years ago. The Marquis could not bear the death of her eldest daughter and exchanged her with a baby from a family in the Yu State. Feng Muchui grew up in the Yu Kingdom. She worked in the market since she was a child and worked as a peddler of information for six years. She developed a vicious eye, an abacus, and a heart that distrusts others and only believes what she finds out.
When she was eighteen years old, she took her adoptive father's scale, her mother's jade pendant, and her best friend's red string, and went north to the Kingdom of Chen to recognize her relatives and return home. What awaits her is not rich clothes and fine food - her mistress who is greedy for 4,700 taels of silver, her younger brother who was almost sent to serve as an aide in the prime minister's palace, her younger sister who was betrothed to a villain, and the current prime minister Liu Chong who is behind all this.
Feng Mu refused to accept her fate. She checked accounts, divorced her, protected her younger siblings, sued the ancestral hall, exposed the fake legitimate daughter, engaged in winter clothing business for border troops, opened a shop to make money - using the brains of a businessperson, she cut a bloody path between the Marquis's mansion and the court.
Behind her, there are always two people standing - one is Song Yuyue, the sworn best friend in the Yu Palace and now the eldest daughter of the Emperor Chen; the other is Xu Yan, who grew up over the wall on Cangwu Mountain and is the daughter of the leader of the martial arts alliance.
Three women, a red rope, an abacus, and a chess game.
Liu Chong wants power, Feng Mu wants a way to live, Song Yuyue wants the dragon chair, and Xu Yan wants freedom. None of them is anyone else's pawn - whoever touches the foundation of their best friend will be the next table to be overturned.
