The second young mistress of Ning'an Lord Manor, daughter of the late Grand Secretary Shen Shao. Married to Xie Feng'an at age 15, she has spent seven years neglected while her husband took concubines. She is skilled at grinding pigments for painting, lives with detachment like a nun, and possesses pure white skin, long dark eyebrows, and profound pupils carrying subtle melancholy. She refuses to compete for favor or learn seductive arts. At the end of Chapter 1, after being forced to kneel and copy sutras in the ancestral hall, she stabs herself with her jade bead hairpin engraved with 'Virtue and Kindness Are Paramount.' She is the protagonist of the story.
