Angelica Root

In the deserts of the Western Regions, in a poor household. Danggui started cooking at the naan oven when she was three. At five, she learned she wasn’t their biological child. On the day she came of age at fifteen, her parents argued without end. Her father, who normally doted on her mother, ripped up every flower she’d planted in the courtyard and hurled cruel words at her. Her mother neither cried nor made a fuss. She only stared at the flowers strewn across the ground. After her father left, her mother knelt before Danggui and begged her to take her back to the Central Plains. That night, Danggui set the earthen house ablaze. She started that fire only to reclaim what had belonged to her all along. Her father and mother perished in the flames. She scooped up a handful of ashes from the ground and tucked them into her bundle. “Mother, did Father know that your sweetheart in the Central Plains was waiting for you to come home?” On the journey home, the Princess of the Western Regions taught her the konghou, chess, and the art of war. She also taught her, “For a woman of the Central Plains, there is only one way out: marry up.” Danggui refused. She believed every woman in the world had a path of her own beneath her feet. She would carve out that path and show everyone. She entered a brothel and became its top courtesan. Her performance on the konghou led the lame eldest son of the Wei family to claim her as his sworn sister. A spoiled young marquis showered her with money day after day to hear her play, all because he saw another woman’s shadow in her. Everyone said she looked like Wei Qingkui, the legitimate daughter of the Wei family who had married far away in the Western Regions. Only Danggui knew the truth. She didn’t resemble the princess. She resembled the maid at the princess’s side, the one called “Jinyin,” the mother she both loved and resented... So she smiled and plucked the strings of her konghou, carving a path through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood amid everyone’s schemes. She would go home!