Meng Qing was an ordinary transmigrator who was reborn into the Great Tang, born into a paper effigy shop in Suzhou, Jiangnan, as the eldest daughter of the family. She lived a carefree life for eighteen years before choosing for herself a promising marriage.
In an era that valued agriculture and suppressed commerce, as the daughter of a merchant family, Meng Qing sought to elevate her social status and secure opportunities for her descendants to study and enter officialdom. With careful planning and investment—and bringing with her a considerable dowry—she married Du Li, the second brother of Du Min, a poor scholar who consistently ranked first at Chongwen Academy.
In the second year after her marriage, after giving birth, she had a dream. In it, her younger brother-in-law Du Min would pass the imperial examination with distinction in three years, ride through Chang’an in glory, and pluck the famed flowers of honor, bringing the Du family unmatched prestige. Yet she, the very one who had invested in the family, would suffer in reputation, becoming the “notorious second sister-in-law of the top scholar,” despised by all.
First, she would be labeled as mean-spirited—making a fuss over spending just two taels of silver on her brother-in-law, to the point the entire village would hear of it, leaving the scholar too ashamed to hold his head up.
Second, she would be accused of being overly profit-driven—using the scholar’s name to drum up business for her natal family, humiliating him in front of his peers.
Third, she would be called a home-wrecker—turning her husband, Du Li, against his own parents, making him favor her and her family above his own.
Fourth—and most serious of all—in the dream, she unreasonably insisted on having her own child adopted under her younger brother-in-law’s name!
Meng Qing woke up in anger, but as she thought about the dream, she began to smile. Things were about to get interesting.
—
The Du family was poor. To support their exceptionally studious third brother, Du Li remained unmarried even past the age of twenty. He knew clearly that his own marriage would become a bargaining chip to fund his younger brother’s education.
Unwilling for both himself and his future wife to become beasts of burden for the family, he secretly sabotaged two nearly finalized marriage arrangements.
So when Meng Qing deliberately engineered an encounter with him, he understood her intentions perfectly.
Du Li knew of Meng Qing—the eldest daughter of the Meng family’s paper effigy shop. She was sharp-tongued, pleasing in appearance, highly skilled in business, and known as a “thorny flower” around the foot of Ruiguang Temple.
But she had no impression of him.
Du Li understood that Meng Qing’s smile was not for his looks. Just like him, what she desired was the future fame and power that his third brother would one day attain.
But he did not mind.
A thorny flower in his hands would only prick him—he would be the one to bleed, the one to feel the pain. And he was willing. Willing to be pricked, and content to bear the pain.
