ONE

CHAPTER ONE- THE BOAT

The gambling den was filled with different men, varying by their attitudes and social classes. Qianyu strode in, calm and confident. Some men took no notice of her entry,while the others regarded her presence with utter disgust. They could not believe that a poor farm girl had come to gamble, and they thought the scene before them hilarious.

Qianyu was smarter than the men thought. She knew very clearly the odds of winning for each gamble, but she gladly feigned ignorance. She was also aware that by losing gamble after gamble until she was to her last coin, she would cause be able to distract those in the gambling den from achieving their targets. She struck it big on her final go, and not just earned back what she lost, but also pocketed the gold of all the men who had laughed at her.

Nobody knew who she was other than the niece of a farmer, Ji Yan. But when Ji Yan faked death to escape her enemies, Qianyu took her place in tedious field-tending of magical crops. Even after Qianyu came of age, there had not been any men interested in her due to her dull appearance. Eventually, a month ago, an unmarried farmer came to her with a marriage proposal, and they had a short relationship,before ending it with a quarrel three days ago. The men at the den had laughed it off at her, thinking she had come to gamble due to depression from the break up.

When Qianyu had lost, the men had jeered at her and told her to "give it up". Qianyu had put most of her money in several losses in order to create an image in the minds of the men that she was sure to lose all the gold she had. When she was finally to her last coin, the men strongly believed that they would win, and all bet on the opposite of what she bet on. They forgot what they were planning to bet on and pitched all their gold on the belief that Qianyu would lose no matter what she were to bet on.

In less than three hours, Qianyu walked away, almost struggling with a sack of gold coins, nevertheless grinning, to the troubled faces of the crowd. "And we thought we were smarter than to follow the actions of a naïve, jilted young farm girl," groaned a gambler as Qianyu disappeared into the distance.

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Qianyu reached her home, a small yet tidy cottage hidden in the darkness of the woods. While everyone regarded her as an dull and ugly farm girl, she instead had a cottage kept secret within the woods. Pulling on a knob on the floor that opened up a hidden compartment underground, she dumped her load into the chest inside the compartment, and headed into one of the bedrooms. There, a woman of about forty dressed in black sat before a mirror, putting on her makeup.

"Aunt, I am home," she said cheerfully.

The older woman stood up slowly, and turned to face her. Despite her old age, Qianyu's aunt Ji Yan's beauty knew no bounds. A pair of cold and ruthless eyes stared, threatening any man who looked at her. She had an incredibly fair complexion, probably due to her practice of dark arts. Her practice had preserved her beauty and strengthened her will, but killed her innocence. Ji Yan had no intention of letting Qianyu inherit her martial arts. Unlike Ji Yan, Qianyu was not beautiful, and instead of Ji Yan's sharp killer eyes, she had warm, almond eyes and a real smile that would make one melt. Ji Yan knew Qianyu had a pure and innocent heart, and while she loved Ji Yan, she was troubled that one day Qianyu would walk the path she and Qianyu's mother Yiren had once walked. Thus, Qianyu led a life of mystery and disguised herself to make her look dull and ugly, under her orders.

Looking at Qianyu made Ji Yan uneasy. She recalled what Yiren had told her before she had left Muxue Village. Qianyu was only to live a life of mystery and disguise only until the age of twenty, and she had turned twenty this morning.

"My lovely niece, you don't have to disguise yourself any longer," Ji Yan said. "My return will not be a long one. You are no longer the farm girl you were." She handed Qianyu the deed to her store, and a new gown of silk. "Go, and tell my workers you are the new boss of the store."

Qianyu nodded. "I will go now, after I have washed up and dressed to commemorate my twentieth birthday!" she gladly announced.An hour later, Qianyu emerged from the bathrooms, her hair neatly brushed and bound in a ponytail, and dressed in the gown of pale red. Sighing, she addressed the fact that her aunt had left. "Aunt," she whispered. "When could you settle down for good?"

She headed towards the store and no sooner had she reached the town, located in the middle of the island, when she encountered a huge stampede of people rushing to the wharf in panic, while yelling and shouting that a strange boat had landed.

A fortune teller had told of a prophecy that she would meet one who shared her fate when she turned twenty, and that someone would come via a boat. She shivered at the thought of love, which her aunt had always felt was inappropriate for her, and had scolded her every single time she spoke of romance tales from books she read as a child. But somehow the diviner's prediction aroused some kind of curiosity inside her,and she rushed to the scene, desperate to see for herself this strange boat and its passengers.