Jiang Qingli was set up by her half-sister and abducted during her coming-of-age ceremony. Before long, rumors spread that her virtue had been ruined and she had been violated. Everyone knew about it.
Her childhood sweetheart and fiancé publicly demoted her to concubine so he could use her dowry to marry her half-sister as his principal wife.
Demoting his wife to a concubine and stealing her dowry: did he really think that because her mother had died young, she had no one to stand up for her and would be easy to bully?
On the day the betrothal gifts were delivered, she tore up the marriage contract and cut ties with the scoundrel on the spot.
She dumped the scoundrel, talked back to her future mother-in-law, beat up her stepmother, and dealt with her half-sister. In one fell swoop, she made a name for herself throughout the capital.
She had once kept her temper in check because she wanted to marry, but that didn’t mean she was only fit to be a wife and let others walk all over her.
“Jiang Qingli, you’ve lost your virtue. With behavior like that, who in the capital would dare marry you?”
The scoundrel spoke with righteous certainty, furious and humiliated. Everyone in the capital was talking about the scandal.
“I dare!”
A powerful minister feared by everyone at court strode forward from the crowd.
“From now on, anyone who dares question my wife’s virtue will be put to death!”
With those words, the man silenced everyone who had been gossiping about her.
Jiang Qingli stared at him in disbelief. “Wait, we haven’t even had the wedding ceremony. When did I become your wife?”