In the thirteenth year of Emperor Liang Qinghua’s reign, a shocking incident occurred in Jiangzuo that stunned both court and countryside: Shen Qian, Great Liang’s Commissioner of the Three Bureaus, was investigated and imprisoned for involvement in a major case of illegal salt trading.

The Great Liang court collectively called the Ministry of Revenue, Bureau of State Expenditures, and Salt and Iron Transport Commission the Three Bureaus. Shen Qian was the head of the Three Bureaus, holding the position of Finance Minister, overseeing all of Jiangzuo’s monetary receipts and expenditures, taxes and levies, and the salt and iron monopoly business. Shen Qian had used his official position to line his own pockets through illegal salt trading, with embezzled funds reaching the staggering amount of one million taels. When this matter came to light, it shocked both court and countryside.

This Shen Qian was not only honored as the current Finance Minister, but also served as head of the Jiangzuo aristocratic Shen family. The Jiangzuo region had always valued aristocratic families and noble clans, especially the four surnames Qi, Shen, Fu, and Han above all others. After Shen Qian’s case was exposed, the court ordered a thorough investigation of the entire Shen lineage, only to discover that his whole household was implicated. From top to bottom they had colluded in wanton profiteering, brazenly annexing land in Yuzhang, Poyang, Nankang and other prefectures, causing the common people to be displaced and suffer unbearably.

However, because at that time the Shen family was the second greatest aristocratic family in Jiangzuo after only the Qi family, with deeply entrenched family power and influence, officials protected each other, leaving the common people with no recourse for their grievances. This harm had persisted for decades. Emperor Liang was furious and had the entire Shen household imprisoned. Shen Qian’s three familial generations were executed, while other clan members were punished according to the depth of their involvement with penalties ranging from dismissal from office to exile. It became a major case known to every woman and child in the streets and alleys that year.

Shen Xiling’s dream began in the winter of the thirteenth year of Qinghua.

Jiankang City embraced the Qinhuai River to the south and leaned against the Rear Lake to the north, with Zhongshan Mountain coiled like a dragon and Stone City crouching like a tiger. It had always been a place blessed with natural treasures and outstanding people. Yet that winter was unusually snowy, and when her father came to see her and her mother for the last time, it was during the heaviest snowfall of that winter.

During that period, her mother had fallen ill again.

She was a beautiful yet frail woman, but had been bedridden with chronic illness for years. Shen Xiling was young then and didn’t know what illness her mother suffered from, only knowing that every time her father saw her mother’s sickly appearance, he would reveal a sorrowful expression. But he had always been devoted to her mother and was unwilling to let her worry as well, so he would always force himself to smile cheerfully. Her mother’s health was actually already very weak at that time, but understanding her father’s heart, she was unwilling to make him more sorrowful. Every time her father returned, she would force herself to rally from her illness to converse and laugh with him.

That year Shen Xiling was eleven years old.

This was a very delicate age—she still seemed as innocent and ignorant as a child, yet also seemed to vaguely understand some things. For instance, when she was small she didn’t quite understand why her father loved her mother so much yet only came to see her two or three times each month. But by then she was gradually beginning to understand that it was because her mother was her father’s mistress. This novel term “mistress” was something that lady who had come to the door to bully her mother had said two years ago. Only later did she learn that the richly dressed lady was her father’s wife, who had cursed her mother as a shameful mistress and cursed her as a filthy illegitimate daughter.

After understanding this matter, she then came to know why she couldn’t see her father often, and also understood why she couldn’t live with her father like his other children did, but had to live with her mother in this remote small courtyard. Her childhood days had been quite impoverished. Her mother’s health wasn’t as poor then as it later became, and sometimes she would take her out to walk the streets. The place they visited most often was the pawn shop, where her mother would pawn some jewelry her father had given her to buy books for her to read and sweets for her to eat. So she had always thought her father came from humble circumstances, until that lady came pounding on their door and she learned that her father was Great Liang’s current Finance Minister and also the patriarch of a noble aristocratic family.

But she bore no resentment toward her father. On the contrary, she loved and respected him greatly, and she knew her mother felt the same way toward her father.

Her father was a very refined and gentle person, tall and handsome in appearance. According to her mother, when her father was young he had been a famous handsome man in Jiankang City. His Majesty’s sister, Princess Zhaohe, had once admired her father and wanted to marry him as her husband, but later when she learned that her father was already married, she regretfully abandoned the idea.

Her father was very tender. Each time he came he would bring gifts for Shen Xiling. His hands were quite skillful, and the things he brought her were mostly made by himself—sometimes little wooden carved figures, sometimes other small trinkets, each one very much to her liking. Unfortunately, the time her father spent by their side was always very brief, but whenever he came, all three of them would be very happy. Her mother’s spirits would improve greatly, her father would personally enter the kitchen to cook for them, and after meals he would accompany them as they strolled in the small courtyard. In the evenings he would tell them stories. He seemed to have endless stories—some were supernatural legends, some were tales of talented scholars and beautiful women, and occasionally he would read travel accounts of mountains and rivers, which they also enjoyed. As long as he was there, her mother would be very happy, and Shen Xiling would be very happy too.

The day Jiankang City had heavy snowfall, her father came.

When he arrived, there were no fragrant carriages or servants beside him. He wore simple hemp cloth clothing, with a straw raincoat and bamboo hat on top, carrying no umbrella. Seeing her father arrive from across the courtyard, Shen Xiling ran joyfully toward him. Her father was covered in snow all over, and seeing her run over, he lifted her up, but then quickly brought her back inside the house, afraid she would catch cold, brushing away the snow that had fallen in her hair.

Shen Xiling wanted to act spoiled with her father as usual and ask him for the grass-woven little grasshopper she had begged him to make last time, but she sensed that her father’s mood was somewhat low that day, as if he had something on his mind, so she didn’t pester him.

She had always been a very understanding child, and somewhat sensitive. Everything around her often required her to discover on her own—whether her mother was forcing herself to rally from illness, or whether their family had actually run out of money. She never wanted to cause her mother trouble, because she had always known her mother’s life was very difficult. So she never asked many questions, only paid more attention herself, and when she discovered something she would never speak much about it, afraid it would make her mother sad and heartbroken.

That day her father entered the room to speak with her mother, and before dinnertime he hurriedly had to leave.

At that time Shen Xiling actually felt very reluctant to part with her father. She hadn’t seen him for nearly a month. She very much wanted to eat food her father cooked, very much wanted to hear her father’s stories. It had snowed that day, and it was her first time seeing snow—she also wanted to play in the snow with her father in the courtyard and listen to her father recite poetry related to snow.

But she didn’t try to keep her father there. She only silently accompanied her mother in seeing her father off.

That day her father was very unusual. When he left he seemed extremely sorrowful, crouching down to hold her very tightly in his embrace, stroking her hair and repeatedly calling her pet name: “Wenwen…”

Her father seemed to cry, yet also seemed not to.

Shen Xiling didn’t know what had happened, only that when her father walked out the wooden gate that day, his steps seemed somewhat unsteady. His retreating figure gradually disappeared in the wind and snow filling the sky, until she could no longer see even a trace of her father’s shadow.

The next day, many soldiers carrying weapons and wearing armor burst into her and her mother’s small courtyard.

She was very frightened, because the last time people had barged in so rudely, it had been when her father’s wife had brought people. They had insulted her mother and even beaten them. She feared all that would happen again, yet vaguely felt that this time might be even more serious than the last.

But her mother seemed to have been prepared long ago. She was dressed neatly and properly, tightly grasping Shen Xiling’s hand.

They were imprisoned in a great jail.

Imprisoned together with them were many people she didn’t recognize, almost all surnamed Shen. Among these people were both men and women, separated into different prison cells. Shen Xiling wondered whether her father was also among them. She inquired of others and only then learned that the place where they were imprisoned was called Shangfang Prison, while her father was not here—he was imprisoned in what was said to be the more sinister and terrifying Court of Judicial Review Prison.

In prison she learned many things about her father, probably more than she had learned in all her previous eleven years combined. Those people said her father was a muddle-headed and incompetent lord who was greedy and murderous toward outsiders, pocketing the enormous sum of one million taels for himself, while internally unable to restrain his clan members or properly guide his children, causing the century-old Shen family to be destroyed overnight. Shen Xiling didn’t know what weight “one million taels” represented, or how many of her mother’s hairpins would need to be pawned to exchange for it. She only knew that everyone was cursing her father, cursing such a gentle and kind-hearted person.

She argued with everyone in the prison, but her mother stopped her. At that time her mother was actually already very ill. The prison was damp and cold, and that year Jiankang was particularly frigid. Her mother had contracted an illness in prison but concealed it, not letting her know. She herself was quite useless then too, seeming to know only how to cry every day. Her mother would only hold her, saying to her, “Wenwen be good, Wenwen sleep a while longer…”

Such days continued for who knows how long—perhaps half a month, perhaps a month, or perhaps only a brief four or five days. Shen Xiling can no longer remember precisely now. The only thing she remembers is that later, on a certain day, someone came to rescue them.

She and her mother were called out by the prison warden. During those days people were often taken out like this, mostly men, and no one knew what they were taken to do, only that when they returned they would be covered in blood. She thought she and her mother would also be like this, but unexpectedly that prison warden secretly led them out and released them. A sword-carrying wandering knight met them, intending to take them out of the city to flee.

That wandering knight claimed to have been arranged by her father to rescue them. Upon hearing this news, Shen Xiling was unspeakably overjoyed. She thought that since her father could make such arrangements, surely their family would eventually have a time of reunion, so she asked that wandering knight, “When will my father come to find us?”

That wandering knight vaguely said “The master has his own arrangements.” She looked up at her mother in confusion, but her mother only smiled at her, with sorrow in her eyes that she could not yet understand at that time.

The knight wanted to take them out of the city immediately, but by then her mother was already extremely ill. She had suffered greatly in prison and was already delirious and unable to walk. Seeing this situation, that wandering knight could only pause to obtain medicine for her mother, and it was precisely this pause that threw everything into chaos.

Even if her father had extraordinary powers, the matter of two people disappearing from Shangfang Prison could never be concealed for long, especially since her father had already lost power by then. After the matter was exposed, government soldiers immediately began large-scale searches throughout the city. Seeing the situation was not good, that wandering knight knew he could not continue staying in the city and attempted to take their mother and daughter out of the city under cover of night.

Originally the soldiers guarding the city had been bought off by her father’s people, but once the search warrant was issued, variables arose in this matter. All the city gates of Jiankang added many government soldiers, carrying swords and wearing armor, making it difficult to muddy the waters any longer. But that wandering knight didn’t know beforehand that such great changes had occurred in the situation, and was thus stopped by government soldiers at the city gate. After several rounds of questioning, they found the three of them suspicious and immediately moved to arrest them.

At that time Shen Xiling had actually also contracted a cold, but because her mother was so severely ill, she had no time to attend to herself. She was only sustained by the wild hope that her family could be reunited. When that wandering knight was arrested by government soldiers right before her eyes, her hope suddenly shattered.

It was a scene that gave her nightmares for many years: her mother fainted in her arms. She was so thin, so light—her father could lift her with one hand—yet at that time she pressed down on young Shen Xiling until she could hardly breathe. She knelt on the ground, helplessly watching that wandering knight who had come to rescue them fight to the death with the city guard soldiers, only to be easily struck down by so many people. He was pinned to the ground with his arms locked behind his back, his face pressed into the filthy mud, the look in his eyes toward her filled with guilt and despair.

Her eye sockets and breathing were all burning hot, everything before her eyes spinning in bizarre and fantastical ways. In her daze she didn’t know where she was or what was happening around her. She thought perhaps she was only having a nightmare, and when she woke up her mother would be fine and her father would have come, bringing her that grass-woven little grasshopper she had wanted last time.

But at that moment it began to snow.

Jiankang City hadn’t had snow for more than ten years, yet that winter it snowed several times in succession. The icy snowflakes fell on her face, severing all her wild fantasies cleanly. The image of her father and mother walking hand in hand before her eyes faded away like spring river flowers and moon turning to bubbles, leaving only a vast white snowfall before her eyes. All the sounds around her also suddenly disappeared. Though her surroundings were so noisy at that time, to her it seemed like complete deathly silence.

In that deathly silence, she hazily heard the sound of bronze bells.

Wheels moved slowly as a horse carriage came from the end of the long street. It had a fragrant wooden body with bronze bells adorning the four corners, its windows blocked by a curtain of crepe silk, making it impossible to see who sat inside the carriage. The two horses pulling the carriage were tall and strong. Their hooves stepped on the extremely thin snow that had not yet accumulated, snorting loudly and breathing out white air, making low whinnies in the snowy night.

Even in a place as supremely prosperous as Jiankang, such an elegant carriage was not commonly seen. Shen Xiling had seen such a carriage before—it was the one her father had taken her in when watching lanterns during the Lantern Festival two years ago. That was her first time riding in a carriage, and such an elegant one at that, so naturally she was extremely curious and delighted. Seeing her so happy, her father’s expression had become sorrowful for some unknown reason, and he had said “Wenwen, I’m sorry” to her many times.

She still doesn’t know why her father had apologized to her then, but at this moment she had a wild hope, thinking her father had come. Once that curtain was lifted, her gentle and tall father would step down from the carriage and take both her mother and her back home. He would find the best physician to treat her mother’s illness, would cook a large table of delicious food to comfort them, and she would surely eat especially well while her mother would smile especially tenderly.

But at that time she only heard an indifferent voice come from behind that crepe silk curtain—it was the carriage owner asking his household servant, “What’s happening outside?”

His household servant bowed and answered, “Young Master, it’s those few criminal slaves from Fenghe Garden who have been detained by the military officers.”

“Oh?” That person’s tone lifted slightly, “They’ve been caught?”

His household servant responded affirmatively, then respectfully lifted the carriage curtain for him, and he slowly stepped out from the carriage.

That was Shen Xiling’s first meeting with Qi Ying.