『Jade Tea Bone』
Lu Jianglai
Set in Lin'an during the Southern Song dynasty, the centuried Rong clan—the tea monarchs of Jiangnan—rules the regional tea trade. Yet beneath the flourishing culture of tea lies a nest of vicious infighting, entangling the imperial court, local magistrates, and Jiangnan gentry. The story's overt plotline opens with a murder on Yang Dingchen's wedding night, while the covert thread tracing the wrongful annihilation of the Wei family runs through the entire narrative, intertwining four driving currents: the tea trade, family power struggles, bureaucratic corruption, and long-harbored vengeance. Rong Shanbao is the eldest legitimate daughter of the Rong clan. Born with an innate genius for tea, her gift for evaluating leaves and discerning aromas is unmatched, making her the family's designated successor. Strikingly gorgeous yet formidable, meticulous, and decisive, she shoulders both the Rong tea plantations and the clan's fierce disputes. Lu Jianglai, the newly crowned top imperial scholar, achieved early prominence and serves as the magistrate of Chunning. Highly skilled in solving crimes, he is secretly the lost illegitimate son of the Duke of Yong. The two had clashed in their earlier years; when Lu Jianglai is framed in a past case of wife murder, hunted down, and left gravely wounded on the brink of death, Rong Shanbao rescues him. Knowing his true identity, she takes advantage of his critical injuries and amnesia to bring him back to the Rong estate, demoting him to a stablehand to humiliate and test him. Lu Jianglai sees right through her game and plays along, faking amnesia to lie low—serving as a stablehand while secretly investigating the truth behind the conspiracy. Thus begins their battle of wits and veiled gambits.