Cheng Niannian's life dealt her a lousy hand from the start.
Born premature, she had her right hand broken in a fall, and a blood draw damaged the nerves in her leg. She even got into college, but never made it there. She thought this was all her life would ever be.
Then one evening, beneath a plane tree in the square, she saw someone. The profile of him looking down at his book made her stop in her tracks. She remembered one name: Zhou Huaixu.
But when she began moving forward, she discovered that he wasn't the only one helping her find her footing.
She had a master younger than herself, who handed her a peachwood sword in a dream. She had a younger brother nine years her junior, who remembered that she paused when she walked. And she had a mother who was all bark and soft at heart, whose love simmered at the stove and was never spoken aloud.
The thing Cheng Niannian was best at in life was holding on by herself.
But this time, someone shielded her from the wind, someone taught her to sit down and breathe, and someone sent her a message before her surgery:
