"It was your heart that saved you."
"...whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world."
-- The Princess of Pure Reason
— Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Meng Shi was one the most popular prostitutes of her time. Other than her beauty, she was one of the few that knew how to read and write poems, sing, dance, paint, play the guqin and chess. This placed great value to her within the brothel and ensured that she would entertain the well educated scion that were more prominent than the rest of the clients. One can say Meng Shi was both lucky and unlucky at the same time. This mainly had to do with her background.
Meng Shi was born in a respectable merchant family. Her mother was a concubine married to her father who happened to be the head of the house. It could be said with this Meng Shi was destined for a different path in life and her chance of ending up where she was were low. Her father was a good businessman and it could be said that Meng Shi's grandfather would have been satisfied with the son he educated. It was unfortunate that both had passed on earlier due to an accident and all the businesses were left under the care of the family head's younger brother. It would have been better if he had the same business mind as his brother, however, he was a wastrel who was lazy, idle and liked playing around outside squandering money on women and wine. His worst habit was that he loved gambling. This marked the downfall of Meng Shi's family. It did not take too long before, the multiple businesses they had failed due to poor management and they were in debt. The younger brother had managed to squander all the hard effort that had been done by the previous family heads. His debts grew so much in size that he had to sell off. Some of the family members were sold off to become laborers, however, Meng Shi was unlucky. It mainly had to do with the fact that she was beautiful and had the potential to become even more beautiful when she fully grew.
And in a way, he was right because she was beautiful. It was this very beauty that attracted a certain sect leader and it would be this same beauty that would give her a life handle to survive along with her child. It should be noted that with the beauty she had, it was inevitable that she would have multiple suitors waiting in line for her attention. One such suitor came from a scholarly family that had history working in local administrative offices. This particular family branch benefited because of a connection gained by the main branch family that had certain influence within the imperial administration. Huang Yu was the second son from the main wife and the head of the third branch found within the Huang family. He was intelligent and had good results in the scholarly examinations which allowed him to work like his father in the local administrative offices. He had been filial agreeing to a marriage arranged by his parents. It was a loveless marriage and he had found himself infatuated with Meng Shi that he was willing to buy her and take her as his wife. He was so infatuated that he was even ready to accept to take care of her and her baby. His parents were almost angered to death but he would not be moved. He had decided.
For, Meng Shi, she would find herself fighting a more different battle than the one she was used to within the brothel but for this little one, she was prepared to fight. A mother's love can be powerful because with this the story had changed. All that was to be done was to wait to see just how far it had changed. Was this the spark that would save many or would lead to a much darker future.