Old Stories by the River

Late autumn in Wuzhen, the river surging by. Shen Zhiyu once had the finest life imaginable: the cherished daughter of a merchant family, she and Lu Yanci, the young master of the Lu family, were deeply in love and on the verge of marriage. She thought the rest of her life would be peaceful and secure. But overnight, everything changed. The Shen family’s trading house collapsed, their fortune vanished, and creditors came knocking. Lu Yanci, who had once sworn eternal love to her, publicly disavowed her and personally severed every tie between their families. The Shen family was plunged into an abyss. Covered in wounds and bewildered, she fled to another place in a panic, drifting for three whole years. Three years later, Shen Zhiyu returned to Wuzhen. Not to reclaim a love that had passed, but to cut through the layers of fog shrouding the past and recover the truth and good name buried with the Shen family. An old letter conceals a cryptic warning. A retired bookkeeper lets slip a cruel truth. By an abandoned ferry crossing, she finds the original account books left behind by her father’s generation. Step by step, she tears away the gentle facade and sees that the Shen family’s ruin was no accident brought on by the times. It was a calculated scheme of gradual plunder, concealed beneath a mask of affection. On one side stands her former love, wielding immense power and holding Wuzhen’s fortunes in his hands. Ambition intertwines with lingering obsession as he tries to keep both fame and fortune, and their old love. On the other stands a woman who has returned with little power but refuses to bow, armed with hard evidence, lying low and plotting every step. Their old love was reduced to ashes long ago in the blaze of family vengeance. From now on, she will speak not of romance, but of justice. As the river’s endless murmur flows through the passing years, she will shatter with her own hands the gleaming facade he wears and win a long-overdue answer for the wrongly accused Shen family.