The Tangled Knot: How the Misunderstanding Began

When Gu Mingyuan, the third prince, was five, his father Gu Jinglan sent him to Qingzhou to become the disciple of Jiang Wuyi, a reclusive martial arts master. His birth mother, Qin Ruling, faked her death and went into hiding. Unable to stop worrying about her son, she disguised herself as a man, took the name Lin Er, and moved in next door to him in Qingzhou. Having grown up without a mother's love, Gu Mingyuan was suspicious of Lin Er. After testing and speculating about her time and again, he learned part of the truth about what had happened years ago, and came to the wrong conclusion: his mother had abandoned her husband and son to elope with his martial uncle, Chen Guanghua. His father's coldness toward him, he believed, was all because of that. His parents had arranged for his master to take him as a disciple and treat him well only to make up for it. Chen Guanghua's adopted daughter, and Lin Er's disciple, was actually their illegitimate daughter. He felt sympathy for his kind, gentle martial uncle, and helplessness toward his guilt-ridden mother. His weak, ineffectual father was innocent too. The only person he wanted to take revenge on, after all his careful scheming, was his half-sister, who shared his mother but not his father.