The Quicksand Secret

My name is Bai Liaosha. Liaosha is another name for heartbreak vine.

The year I was born, a white-bearded Daoist happened to pass by our house. My mother invited him in and asked him to read my fortune. The old fraud scribbled all over a talisman, insisted my mother was sure to give birth to a boy, then declared that the child would have a life full of hardship. He wrote down the two characters "Liaosha" and gave them to me as a name.

My mother begged and pleaded until my grandmother agreed to the name and had it recorded in the Bai family genealogy.

But to everyone's surprise, I was a girl. My mother was so furious that she fainted on the spot, and my father refused to speak to her for an entire month.

Poor me. It was all because of my unreliable mother that I ended up with this name.

But I never imagined my life would be just like my name, breaking my heart at every turn.