Du Ruoqiu spent eighteen years at Huamanlou. Before she had ever known love, she was forced to lose her innocence. From then on, she saw men as terrifying beasts and avoided them whenever she could. But trapped as she was, her fate was not her own.
At last, one day, she got the chance to escape her cage and set up a small stall in Taohua Lane to make a living.
Her stall sat beneath a lush peach tree, and Du Ruoqiu herself hid among its dense branches. The other vendors called out loudly to customers, but she only dared peek at them from behind the tree.
It didn't matter if business was bad, thought Du Ruoqiu, who was too timid to strike up a conversation with anyone. She could probably survive on dew, anyway.
But Du Ruoqiu, who had spent her whole life being meek and timid, never imagined that one day she would kneel before the yamen for a man as terrifying as a beast, holding a thorny switch in her hands and crying out, "I refuse to accept this," before the magistrate's court.
* Romance-focused, the heroine is inexperienced while the hero is not, a story about ordinary people
* A courtesan who buys her freedom x an executioner who has laid down his blade
Theme: A new life
