Lian Haiping was an ordinary girl from a Jiangnan sweet soup shop. Like other girls, she had loving parents, shared the joy of splashing among lotus leaves and sneaking off to pick white lotuses with her friends, and compared whose embroidery was the most colorful and intricate. But when she was sixteen, a visit to relatives with her father changed the course of her entire life. Step by step, she went from a simple, illiterate girl who couldn't hurt a fly to a formidable woman versed in both letters and arms.
