Secret Records of Yaoking

After losing both her parents, Ning Zhen took her vast fortune to the capital to seek refuge with her maternal family. She thought she would live carefree as a young lady of the household. Instead, the maids around her began dying one after another, her money was embezzled and squandered, and her health steadily deteriorated until she was frail and constantly ill. At a spring banquet, a lecherous man even shoved her into the water, hoping to ruin her reputation and force her into marriage. In desperation, she hid in the room of the imperial watchdog everyone feared. At first, he was cold and heartless, with no idea how to treat a woman gently. When she offered to help solve cases in exchange for his assistance, he unhesitatingly threw the frail girl out into the pouring rain. Later, relying on her ability to remember everything she saw, she recounted every tiny detail from the crime scene. Slender as a willow, with a voice like silver bells, she caught his eye and won his admiration. Later still, he saw her slumped over a desk and thought she had fallen asleep from the strain of solving a case. His heart ached for her, so he thoughtfully draped a coat over her shoulders. When she woke, she glared at him in irritation and stomped on the coat: “I’d fainted again, not fallen asleep! You’re a marquis of such high standing, yet how can you be so stupid?” Shen Hou, The Outcast, who stood second only to the emperor and above all others, could only blush and stammer in response.