Livelihood Silver

Every year, a father visits a certain place to pay tribute to the fallen. His son, a writer, never knew what his father had done in the past, until the father killed himself when their old family home was being demolished. Only then did the son begin to investigate in earnest. It turned out that the old house had been the setting for a breathtaking tale: Li Xiaoniang, the concubine of a wealthy man, eloped with the steward, bringing ruin upon the Li family estate. The master used the family's ancestral emergency fund to weather the crisis. In the years that followed, his descendants and their classmates built houses, started businesses, and made revolution in Shanghai. The Li family's peerlessly beautiful woman eloped with the steward, only to be raped and murdered by bandits. Why did her lover lose his head? Why did her rescuer become a killer? Why did two brothers, known as the Water Ghosts, defy military orders to avenge their brother? Why did a young man fail in his attempt to assassinate the Empress Dowager? Why was the woman he loved an old flame? How did the son of the woman's lover become a descendant of the Li family? A female spy ignites a war between China and Japan, while fifty years of grudges and tangled passions unfold amid momentous events...