Like Jadeite

After a wrongful conviction, her family was destroyed and her friend imprisoned. With no other choice, Ye Zhijun agreed to a marriage meant to bring good fortune to her sick husband.

She once believed she had married a good man. For six years, they had been husband and wife, treating each other with respect.

Until a letter of repudiation shattered every last bit of her dignity.

The world mocked her, saying that a merchant’s daughter had reached above her station and deserved to be cast aside by Marquis Qiyao.

But no one knew that this marriage had been nothing more than a pawn from the very beginning, one she had placed to save her best friend and pave the way for her.

After their separation, her once lofty ex-husband saw her radiant smile belonging to someone else. His eyes reddened with anger, and he was consumed with regret.

He finally came to his senses and pursued his wife across a thousand miles.

But beneath the moon in Gusu, he saw his former wife leaning in another man’s arms, admiring the clouds and rosy skies. Even the son he had once dismissed as a bastard was sweetly calling another man “Dad.”

Only then did Wen Ting realize that every hardship in the first half of her life had been caused by him.

*

Luo Lingxin, a princess of a fallen kingdom, ended up among common folk. While seeking justice for a friend, she was imprisoned.

When she returned, she concealed her identity and took an unconventional path, wagering everything to uphold justice and make her case heard by the emperor.

At court, she debated the assembled scholars, shedding tears for the people. She won the world’s acclaim as an astonishingly gifted top graduate of the imperial examinations.

The young emperor indulged her upright, willful nature and regarded her as the confidante of his life.

He granted her the authority to act “as if the emperor himself were present,” allowing her to cleanse the court and turn her sword against treacherous ministers.

Until, at a grand ceremony, she knocked off her official hat with her sword, and her long black hair spilled down like a waterfall.

The top graduate was actually a woman?

The court and country were shocked, crying that she had committed the unforgivable crime of deceiving the emperor.

Gazing at her clear, unyielding eyes, the emperor gritted his teeth. “Since when have any of you had the right to decide whether my top graduate is guilty?”

*

From a rebellious, gifted young woman to someone’s wife, then a wealthy merchant in her own right; from a dazzling princess to a country commoner, then a power wielding influence over the entire court.

Ye Zhijun endured in the depths of her household, while Luo Lingxin’s official robes were stained with blood.

One working in the open, the other in the shadows, they supported each other and climbed toward power together.

In this world, where power struggles crush all beneath them and Heaven shows no mercy, they would use the hands of the powerful to fight back against the injustices of the world.

[Reading Guide]

1. Two female leads, with career and personal growth arcs.

2. There is a regret-and-redemption arc, but it develops slowly.

Theme: Do not impose on others what you would not want for yourself