After Being Expelled from the Shadow Puppet Troupe, I Seal the Gods with Divination Lots

In late Qing Dynasty Xiaoyi, Shanxi, the ancestral rule of the Xingyuan Shadow Puppet Troupe was "No women in the troupe." Ren Yanhui was the troupe leader Sihai's own granddaughter. Her father died young, and she grew up with her grandfather. Because of the rule, she could only secretly carve oxhide puppets in the storeroom at night. She did so for eight years, and no one knew.

That changed when someone tampered with the hides for the Autumn Festival's sacred performance. The puppets were to be inspected in three days, and if they failed, the troupe would be taken away. She stepped forward and lifted the false ash coating with a carving knife. The whole hall fell silent.

A man from Shaanxi named Gu Zhao came at night with a copy of the long-lost Silk Window Manual, missing for twenty years, and said he would teach her Wanwanqiang opera. She didn't know why he recognized her great-aunt's knife, or why the puppet drawn on the manual's first page looked exactly like her.

The Marquis's residence commissioned a private performance and requested The Picture of Loyalty and Filial Piety. The old troupe leader was ill, and she had no choice but to take his place disguised as a man. When the lights came on, someone from the Qian family in the audience stared at her hands, transfixed.

She would finish the opera her great-aunt had left unfinished twenty years ago.