Conto fantasioso de ambientação na dinastia Tang, em formato de episódios, narrado em terceira pessoa. Hai Chao apenas saiu para colher pérolas, mas acabou entrando por engano em um mundo chamado Xiz
“The so-called ‘catching a son-in-law at the examination results’ is just a figure of speech. It’s always a matter of mutual consent—how could there be any reason to seize someone by force?”
“The Minister’s daughter is as talented as she is beautiful, gifted with both wit and grace. She and Liang Ziming are a perfect match, as if heaven itself decreed it.”
“At the banquet by Qujiang Pond, the two exchanged verses and fell for each other at first sight—where is there any talk of coercion?”
“I know you were once betrothed. In this, he does you wrong, and as his mentor, I apologize to you on his behalf. But Ziming and you…”
The old magistrate did not finish his sentence. He merely stroked his graying beard, brows furrowed, his bloodshot eyes scrutinizing Haichao.
Haichao lowered her head and looked at her own feet.
Her toenails were caked with mud; her feet and heels bore wounds from straw sandals, some scabbed, others still bleeding, mixing blood with dust so that the true color of her flesh was lost.
These were the feet of a pearl diver.
In that instant, she understood the words the old magistrate had left unsaid.
Liang Ye was not like her; they were not of the same world.
She could not even fill a basket with the characters she recognized, let alone match poems with him.
Yet she could not believe it. Because this was Liang Ye—someone she’d known since infancy, who had depended on her as she had on him for seven years, whom she thought she would never be parted from in her life.
When she received the