Sober Amidst a Thousand Cups

For eighteen years, Liang Ruoyin existed in the Liang Manor as nothing more than an invisible shadow. She bled her heart and soul dry drafting military treatises to pave her legitimate brother's path into officialdom, and plucked the zither strings until her fingers bled, composing melodies that crowned her legitimate sister as the capital's "Number One Talented Lady."

​And what did she receive in return for such absolute devotion? A pair of hands pinned down and brutally crushed with a wooden mallet by her own family. A bowl of poison forced down her throat, stripping away her voice forever. And a tattered, foul-smelling straw mat used to toss her broken body into a desolate forest for the ravenous wolves to devour.

​However, the "wolf" that dragged her back from the brink of death was none other than Shangguan Xidian - The Seal-Holding Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial and Superintendent of the Eastern Depot. This treacherous official, feared and revered as the Lord of Nine Thousand Years, had simply been on his way back to the capital.

​He sought out a divine physician to heal her wounds and tossed her a brand-new identity so she could exact her revenge on the Liang family. In exchange, she was to play her zither to soothe the Gu poison that gnawed at his flesh day and night.

​"From this moment on, you bear my surname, Shangguan. Alive, you are a member of the Shangguan clan; dead, you must be a ghost of the Shangguan clan. All your future honor and disgrace will be tied to the Shangguan clan."