Shen Ling spent eighteen years as the daughter of a marquis's household, only to end up branded a bastard by the very people who raised her.
Her mother's reputation was ruined, and she was thrown out. On the night of the Lantern Festival, she braved the snow and knocked on the marquis's door, wanting only to ask her father to hear her out.
But while the family inside celebrated their reunion, a sharp arrow pierced her chest outside the door.
As she lay dying, she met A Ling, a severely wounded Azure Luan who was also on the verge of death.
"Take my body and my name. Avenge me, will you?"
A Ling agreed.
Shen Ling died in that snowstorm, and A Ling survived in her body.
Later, the marquis's household discovered that the girl who had once desperately hoped her father would come around had changed.
She no longer asked to see him, no longer tried to explain herself, and no longer let others push her around.
She exposed her stepmother's schemes to her face, and dug into the past the marquis's household wanted to bury.
She had borrowed Shen Ling's life, so she would seek justice for her and her mother.
They could keep their late-arriving affection and congratulate themselves all they liked.
Every debt would be paid back, one by one.
But before she could take revenge, she had to get past the Bureau of the Strange:
How could a girl who had been shot through the chest and should have died have no wound left the very next day?
