Another favorite joins Qidian!140 characters eh?These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts and are things people actually said in court, word for word, ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?WITNESS: My name is Susan!TTORNEY: She had three children, right?WITNESS: Yes.ATTORNEY: How many were boys?WITNESS: None.ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?───ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?WITNESS: By death.ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?WITNESS: Take a guess.───ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beardATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
Okay I need to talk about this scene where Lin Ling softens for Yinxing because it genuinely hit me. Like, this woman is introduced as this ice queen who makes people unconsciously hug their arms just from her presence, right? She's scanning contaminated vegetables with this deadpan face, and then—BAM—she offers to test them for free, buys half her haul, and then casually drops 'you can call me Sister Lin.' I literally gasped. The way Yinxing's internal monologue goes absolutely feral ('first call her sister, then call her babe, and finally she's your darling') is so accurate to how I felt reading it. And then the best part—Yinxing, this kid who's been surviving on scraps, who just climbed over a wall risking arrest, she immediately tries to GIVE Lin Ling more vegetables and chestnuts for free. That's not transactional thinking, that's genuine warmth. She's been starved for kindness and she's overflowing with it. And Lin Ling? She notices. The text says 'her gaze as it landed on Yinxing carried a fleeting, unusual emotion that passed in a flash.' That fleeting emotion is EVERYTHING. This woman probably hasn't let someone see her soft side in years, and this skinny kid with oversized eyes just walked in and made her want to protect her. The CP energy here isn't romantic—it's something deeper. It's the kind of bond where one person sees the other's worth when nobody else does. I'm already writing fanfic in my head and I haven't even finished the chapter.
Fascinating piece
Love the book ......
Hi guys, I'm finally getting myself back into writing after losing my beautiful mum, thank you all for being so understanding and for your heartfelt messages xx Helen
Great read
What a great read! The story is well-written and moves at a fast pace. The author did an amazing job with descriptions and kept me glued to the story.
Great work....amazing storyline and characters
"Your Highness, please don't abandon me. I will learn very well." I need a minute. I need a whole minute. This twelve-year-old palace maid who was born on a snowy day and knew only a few characters looked at Zhe Qing — a princess, a genius, someone practically untouchable — and begged not to be thrown away. And Zhe Qing's reaction wasn't dismissal or condescension, it was genuine heartache. She ordered nutritious meals, specifically requested hair care products, and forced the girl to sleep two hours a day. This is the kind of found-family warmth that I will not be caught dead admitting makes me emotional in public. The contrast with how the other characters treat people is staggering. Huang Youwei approaches Zhang Yushu with calculated flattery about being from Qing Province — it's transactional, it's networking. But Zhe Qing finds a twelve-year-old laundry maid walking through a garden and her immediate instinct is to recruit her because she spotted genius. She literally chased the girl down, out of breath, and offered her a future. That's not ambition, that's something softer and more dangerous. And then there's Qin Kuan, who has been "indoctrinated" into loving the princess at first sight, aching over her exhaustion, feeling aggrieved that she won't see him. His feelings are real but they're also performative in the worst way — he's in love with the idea of loving her, not with her as a person. Meanwhile Zhe Qing is out here building a medical school, discovering genius in unexpected places, and treating a child like a human being. The emotional core of this story isn't romance, it's the quiet moments where people choose to see each other.
I need to talk about the meat bun scene because I genuinely felt something shift in my chest reading it. Su Jinle takes a big bite and her eyes go moist — not because the buns are amazing (though they clearly are), but because she hasn't had one like this in years. The narrator drops this line about how later the buns got smaller and more fancy but never as fragrant, and I just... I felt that. It's not really about the buns. It's about a moment of peace, of safety, of a family sitting together at a table where nobody is asking her to marry the wrong person or pretend she's someone she's not. And the three yuan. She presses it into her mom's hand like it's the most normal thing in the world, but this is huge. In her previous life she was dependent, stuttering through life, trapped in a marriage where she was basically a substitute. Now she's earned seven yuan in one afternoon and her first instinct is to give it to her mother. The transaction is so simple — ten yuan for a shirt, seven yuan profit — but the emotional value is astronomical. She's buying back her own life, one stitch at a time. The brother-sister moment outside is what really got me though. "Let's both stay at home, okay?" She's asking him to stay, and he says yes. Not because he has to, but because he chooses to. In her past life they were separated — one in the north, one in the south — and she never got to fix that. Now she's fixing it, not with grand gestures but with this quiet request that carries the weight of an entire lifetime of regret. I literally had to pause and process that for a minute.
I loved the book despite the repetition in the beginning. It was obvious some of the POV’s were copy and paste but as the book went on it fixed that. I would have loved to seen more from Mikaylas POV but I understand love stories needed to be introduced. Can’t wait for Book 2.
great story