Records of Hidden Splendor

Su Wantang, the seventh daughter of the Su family, was six when her mother died. Her birth mother left her only one final piece of advice: “Only fools live long.” She remembered it. From then on, she became the most inconspicuous girl in the Su family. When her legitimate elder sister scolded her, she lowered her head; when her legitimate mother withheld her allowance, she endured it. Everyone thought she was a meek, spineless pushover. No one knew that she had a photographic memory, was brilliant with numbers, and could see through people and situations with startling precision. She kept herself hidden for nine whole years. Then an imperial edict arranging her marriage sent her to the Marquis of Dingyuan’s household. Her widowed sister-in-law, Madam Zhou, had controlled the household finances for ten years and drained the marquis’s family fortune. Her husband, Lu Chenzhou, went off to war on the third day of their marriage, entrusting her with the household’s account tokens before he left. A merchant’s illegitimate daughter married into one of the most powerful noble families in the empire, and everyone was waiting to see her make a fool of herself. Su Wantang didn’t laugh. She began to balance the books, tracing the household’s annual repair budget to the trading firm run by Madam Zhou’s cousin, then following the trail from a suspicious fire in the storeroom to the truth behind her eldest brother’s death ten years earlier. Madam Zhou thought she was dealing with a foolish girl. She didn’t know that the rabbit sitting across from her had a knife beneath its paw. Su Wantang herself never expected that investigating the household accounts would lead her to the source of the poison in her birth mother’s bowl. The old case from nine years ago and the household’s rotten books were part of the same web. She hid to survive. She would reveal herself to live well. After hiding for nine years, the girl had finally reached the day when it was her turn to act.