The Sparrow in the Cage: The Grand Tutor Tears Down the Cage, Then Raises an Eagle

[A restrained, nurturing powerbroker × a canny little spy who transforms from sparrow to eagle]

(Growth-oriented heroine, both leads are each other’s only partners, older-man-younger-woman, mutual salvation)

**

When A Zhi first met Pei Ji, she was a little bird presented to him by a courtier eager to curry favor. Timid and alluring, she knew only the tricks that pleased men.

But Pei Ji told her only this: “You won’t survive here by relying on that.”

He struck her, but he also taught her.

At the Pei estate, she was no longer a sparrow. She was someone who could hold her head high.

Pei Ji watched her grow, and in the dead of night, when he could barely restrain himself, he found himself entertaining feelings he shouldn’t have.

**

“At the banquet, someone outside the back wall said things about me… They said I used to be kept in a cage.” A Zhi complained, lips pressed together.

Pei Ji leaned a little closer. “Has the cage been taken apart?”

A Zhi smiled.

“You took it apart.”

Later, word spread that everyone who attended that banquet had mysteriously lost their voice for a month or so, without exception.