[A marriage arranged by imperial decree, love after marriage + strong female lead in business + medical skills to save the day + husband’s campaign to win his wife back] Lin Yunxi was ordered to marry into the Marquis’s household. On their wedding night, instead of competing for favor or consummating the marriage, she made Gu Jinglan sign an agreement: they would divorce after a year, and he would pay her eleven thousand taels in compensation, with interest for any delay.
When the household withheld her monthly allowance, she dug up old accounts and demanded repayment. When a noblewoman tried to humiliate her in public, she stood firm on her rights to her dowry. When someone suddenly fell ill at a palace banquet, she demanded her fee before administering treatment. Gu Jinglan had assumed she was just a country bride who loved money, but then he discovered that her handwriting was identical to that of the mysterious strategist, “Mr. Yun.”
Repeated compensation claims, unpaid border troops, a city sealed off by plague, aristocratic families closing in... She wielded silver like a blade and used medicine to save the city, settling one rotten account after another all the way to the imperial court. But when the divorce papers were finally placed before him, the marquis who had once been eager to sever ties was the first to press down on the seal. “I’ll spend the rest of my life settling what I owe you.”
