Everyone's maidservant

It took her twelve years to rise from a coarse laborer emptying night soil to the first-class maidservant of Lin Yu, the legitimate daughter of a Marquis's manor. The oleanders in the west courtyard of the Minister's residence bloomed vibrantly every year; Song Ashan had personally witnessed three successive concubines perish amidst those floral shadows. She had collected the corpse of an embroideress who threw herself into a well, and seen a cheating lady hang from a beam. She escaped death during a house seizure, only to later support Lin Yu's meteoric rise to power; and during the Lantern Festival banquet, she used half a bowl of sobering soup to extinguish the flames licking at the Minister's son's waistband... Startling clouds appear over the capital, and winds sweep through the palace courtyards. A few joyous funerals to mark the passing, a wild spirit to endure the spring and winter. Worldly affairs are as brief as a dream, human emotions are ever shifting between warmth and cold, The romantic exploits of youth, until mountains and rivers finally meet again.