Mrs. Fu “died” the day the news reported that Chairman Fu had fallen into the sea. Everyone in the village knew she was the country ex-wife he'd cast aside, blessed with Yang Yuhuan's beauty but only good for tending pomegranates.
On a stormy night, the estate lawyer Lu Zheng'an smashed the medicine bowl in her courtyard and brought her the record of her husband's final phone call and a will as thin as a cicada's wing.
"Why are you crying? He kept you in a golden cage for ten years. Now the entire Fu family is your bird food."
She signed her name, thinking she had won her freedom. Little did she know that he had already burned the forged will he had made with his own hands before the Buddha.
"I wagered half my life's good name just so you could taste what it's like to smash a cage."
Only when the old pomegranate tree burst into breathtaking bloom in spring, and she stepped barefoot onto the Fu family's throne, did she understand the fire-forged tenderness in his eyes: he had used his sins as fuel to burn a path to a rebirth meant for her alone.
[Imprisoned beauty from the countryside x calculating, unhinged lawyer] || Healing, tearjerking aesthetic || I break, I bloom in spring, I reign over all
Theme: Ruin and rebirth (broken porcelain meets spring), awakening to freedom under extreme oppression, the boundary between hatred and forgiveness, redemption at the cost of sin, a tribute to the vitality of rural life (the pomegranate motif), the destruction and revival of beauty (both the heroine's appearance and spirit).
