The Green Mountains Beckon

The year the entire Duke of Zhenguo's household was executed, Shen Wanqing was only ten.

She concealed her identity and fled to Jiangnan, honing her military strategy through the fragments her grandfather left behind. At sixteen, under the assumed name "Master Qingshan," she wrote a treatise that stirred the northern frontier, yet never claimed credit for it.

An imperial edict arranging her marriage made her the wife of Xiao Lin, commander of the northern frontier army. He believed she was a spy planted by the emperor, and their marriage remained cold for seven years. She hid her military texts and medical skills, learned to cook, respected her elders, raised their daughter, and became the Third Madam of the marquis's household, so unremarkable that no one remembered her.

Then one winter solstice, she rushed back over three thousand li, only to find another woman sitting in her place, leafing through the manuscripts she'd written as a girl and smiling as she said, "I wrote these." He stood beside her and didn't contradict her.

She made no scene. She simply left a letter of divorce and walked away without looking back.

A year later, an army of three hundred thousand Northern Di troops descended on the frontier. After three months of bitter fighting, Xiao Lin was on the verge of defeat. A person using the name "Qingshan" sent him a formation strategy to defeat the enemy, and he won a great victory. Staring at those two characters in the military report, his chest tightened. He had seen that pen name at the bottom of her dowry chest.

When she returned to the northern frontier in her true identity, she outclassed the celebrated "female Zhuge" with her real talent. Only then did he realize what he had lost over those seven years.

But this time, would she ever turn back?