In the winter of the eleventh year of Guangxu's reign, his father died suddenly at the Jinghe Ferry, and the search order from the Governor's Mansion arrived at the Cheng family at the same time.
At the mourning hall, Cheng Lingzhao hid the secret account in his father's tea brick, took the plain wedding dress from his second aunt, cut it into pieces and threw it into the brazier that night.
She doesn't want to get married, save her life, or be innocent - she just wants tea.
From Jingyang to Lanzhou, from Hankou to Xi'an, she raised caravans, built telegraphs, and set up hidden stakes, turning the tea road into an invisible lifeline across the Hui and Han Dynasties. The Qing court asked her to donate to the emperor, the revolutionary party asked her to fund the uprising, and the great powers wanted to build railways to cut off the tea road, which the Hui tribe relied on for survival.
Everyone thought she would choose a side.
It was not until New Year's Eve in 1900 that Cheng Lingzhao burned three generations of Cheng family tea guides, Zuo Zongtang's secret letters, and fifteen years of secret accounts with his own hands to ashes in front of two governors and three parties.
"I don't want what you fight for. You can't give me what I want."
From a harem waiting to be married to a commoner tea woman, she settled all the debts in the world and finally considered herself a free person.
