Madwoman with a chain-bound rabid-dog streak x stern, upright judge (completed draft)
[Mystery Solving | Love-Hate Relationship | Older Man-Younger Woman | Healing | Equally Matched]
By the time Shen Ruzhi could remember anything, both her parents were dead. The sisters in the pavilion told her that bandits had killed them. Perhaps fate had decided she wasn't meant to die: just before her killer could slit her throat, the Pavilion Master came to her rescue.
Having neither father nor mother, Shen Ruzhi had long since etched coldness into her bones. The only people she had to rely on were the other girls in the pavilion.
Perhaps Heaven couldn't bear to see her suffer and decided to change her luck.
When she was ten, the Pavilion Master personally taught her martial arts, hired tutors at great expense to teach her music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, and adopted her as a daughter. She thought this was a precious gift from Heaven.
At seventeen, she was sent to get close to a court official: the newly appointed Minister of the Court of Judicial Review.
He was usually taciturn and cold-hearted.
Shen Ruzhi came up with a plan and tore down the yamen's notice seeking an official coroner.
By imperial command, Xiao Yanzhuo took up the post of Minister of the Court of Judicial Review and presided over cases. The cases that had piled up over the years were soon cleared, and his iron-fisted methods left no petty criminals bold enough to keep committing crimes.
Late at night, he stroked the red thread in his hand.
When he was young, his family had arranged a childhood betrothal for him. But fate had other plans: the girl's whole family was massacred, and the young girl vanished. There were few clues in the case, and no leads to follow.
Then Xiao Yanzhuo saw something connected to that case on the new coroner. He let her investigate cases, hoping to uncover the truth and learn what had happened all those years ago.
Only... as the investigation went on, he never expected the other end of the red thread in his hand to be tied to this coroner.
Reader's Guide:
① The heroine pretends to be a good person early on, but later her true, not-so-good nature is revealed. In my opinion, the plot takes up more space than the romance, which isn't angsty.
② The heroine is 17 when she appears, and the hero is 30 (they are each other's only partners). If the age gap bothers you, here's the warning; please drop the story if you can't accept it.
③ The story is set during an empress's reign, in a period of women's reform. This is neither a male-emperor setting nor a matriarchy.
④ The full manuscript is complete and written by hand. It was revised before posting, and I won't accept requests to change it. Please don't casually accuse me of plagiarism or ruin the mood. If you don't like it, feel free to leave; no arguing.
That's all. If any of these are dealbreakers, please steer clear.
Theme: The mountain's shadow fades, and the light returns.
