After years of stage play, you and I are mere actors of the play.
The first time she met The Third Master Fu, he booked half of the tables in the brothel. Crossing his legs, he turned and whispered to another wealthy young man. Beneath the shadow, his side face revealed a melancholic charm.
Years later, she realised that she had seen wrongly. Under the dark light, he was sitting on bones piled up together. He was protecting the vast mountain and rivers.
[Ebook][Eng Translation – taken down by translator][Audiobook]
Now, I’ve only read a couple of Mo Bao Fei Bao’s novels, but I must say, that out of all her novels – this is my absolute, absolute favourite. Aside from the amazing characterization of our male lead (Fu Tong Wen) and female lead (Shen Xi), it was an additional bonus (for me) that this novel was set in one of my favourite eras – the Republican era. Unfortunately, good Republican era novels are extremely rare in the C-novel community, as I often find such novels relatively one-dimensional (all-powerful male leads, hapless, long-suffering female leads – the typical tropes), so it was a pleasant surprise to find that Mo Bao Fei Bao managed to side-step these tropes and create an extremely believable male lead and female lead with sufficient strength of character to survive those tumultuous times and, on top of that, make their relationship work.
I’m not going to spoil the novel further as Hoju is translating the novel, but this is a definite must-read for all Mo Bao Fei Bao fans, Republican-era fans, and heck – just romance novel fans! The atmosphere, relationships, and characters created by Mo Bao Fei Bao was so believable, so amazing and all-consuming that I took a really long time to let go of those characters (for I loved them way too much).