Blurb:
Zhou Yin was twenty when she married Wang He, the year she became pregnant with Youyou during her second year of college.
She brought home a bag of vegetables and caught Wang He sneaking a bite. The young woman's lips were the color of plum preserves, her collarbones milky white, glowing with the light of youth.
Wen Ta was twenty, too.
She had cast aside her youth, education, and sense of self. All she had left was a lonely shell of a body, a rebellious daughter, and a man who was filth through and through.
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The man leaned against the wall, his brows like distant mountains and his eyes deep and striking. He was stunning, and his status was just as exceptional: Gu Peiye, the second master of the Gu family and a powerful figure in the antiques world of the capital.
Yet he was willing to remain in a place hemmed in by gray mud walls, cut off from daylight, and stoop to pull her up. "Why can't you ever get the hint?"
At the time, Zhou Yin thought she had met a benefactor, a jade-faced Bodhisattva granted by the gods in answer to her prayers. She was overwhelmed with gratitude.
Who could have guessed that over the decades to come, she would lose even more of herself, trapped in a dazzling, unreal world above the ground?
Even dangling her slender legs, she could no longer touch the earth.
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"Not satisfied?"
Gu Pei playfully gathered a lock of the woman's dark hair and twisted it around his fingers, smiling. He no longer had the sharp, decisive air he once possessed.
Everyone said Zhou Yin had struck it rich by getting together with him. Only he knew that his wish had finally come true.
The woman was ignorant and slow-witted, with no natural beauty to her, only a stubborn backbone. She was no different from anyone else in the world, capable of weakness, hesitation, and foolishness.
But in the end, he became her dog. Bowing his head in submission was his fate.
Theme: Love rises in the east and sets in the west.
