On the day the entire Duke of Protecting the Nation’s household was massacred, three-year-old Shen Qingwu was carried away from the snow.
For the next eleven years, she was the stupid, illegitimate daughter at the bottom of the Shen family. She drank sour water, lived in the woodshed, and was mocked by all of the capital for eleven years.
She remembered everything. She simply couldn’t speak.
Autumn of the third year of Zhou Yongchang. The Double Ninth Festival banquet at the palace.
An envoy from Northern Yan used a priceless national treasure to humiliate Great Zhou in front of everyone. The entire court blushed with shame, but no one dared speak up.
In a corner, the useless girl who had been stupid for eleven years suddenly stood up.
Without a word, she picked up a rag bundle and hurled it straight at the envoy’s face.
Eight brilliant treasures burst open across the hall. The envoy was left covered in blood and passed out on the spot.
Dead silence filled the hall. The emperor rose from his seat, and the officials’ knees buckled.
She stepped across the scattered treasures and walked to the center of the hall. She said just two words:
“Is that all?”
Before her words had even faded, the palace doors flew open.
Xiao Yan, the regent who held all power at court, strode into the hall. Amid the kneeling crowd, he walked straight toward her
And dropped to one knee.
He tilted his head up, his eyes red-rimmed, his voice hoarse as if scraped raw by eleven years of wind and snow:
“Your servant, Xiao Yan, ”
“Has been searching for you for ten whole years.”
No one knew that the useless girl trampled into the dirt by all of the capital held the Nine Provinces Command, an artifact capable of commanding a million soldiers across the Nine Provinces.
And no one knew that the regent who ruled the realm
Had once been an orphan picked up from Bone Hill by Shen Lie.
He had searched for her for ten years to repay the life debt he owed her father.
To repay every mouthful of spoiled food, every winter, and every snowstorm he owed her for these eleven years.
He had knelt before her.
For the rest of their lives, he would never again let her sit alone beneath the parasol tree, counting the moldy grains of rice that never seemed to end.
Theme: Even when mired in the mud, you can still rise and shine.
