The opulent halls of the Rong family mansion, famed tea merchants of Lin'an (临安), held a secret as delicate and potent as their finest brew. For generations, their fortune was attributed to a mystical heirloom: the "Tea Bone," a chosen family member born with an innate ability to discern tea quality and cure ailing tea plants. This myth justified every cruelty, every sacrifice.
The elderly Matriarch Rong enforced this belief with an iron will, having anointed her granddaughter, Rong Shanbao (荣善宝), as the current Tea Bone. But whispers swirled that the true heir was actually the simple-minded sixth daughter, Rong Yunwan (荣筠纨), declared dead to the outside world to hide her perceived shame. While sisters schemed for favor, one remained in the shadows: the fifth daughter, Rong Yunshu (荣筠书).
Believed to have been blind for twenty years, she sat quietly in corners, a silent witness to the family's poisonous dynamics. No one suspected her sightless gaze saw everything, or that her heart burned with a cold, patient fury.
The Performance of a Lifetime
Rong Yunshu's blindness was a meticulously crafted performance, a role she perfected after a childhood tragedy. Two decades prior, her mother, deemed of lowly birth, was cast out into a freezing winter night by the Matriarch while her father was away on business. She froze to death in a dilapidated temple, denied even a proper coffin. Her father returned to this horror, his spirit broken, and died of sorrow years later.
From that day, young Yunshu donned an eye-patch. Her "disability" became her greatest asset, rendering her harmless and invisible. It allowed her to move through the house like a ghost, listening, observing, collecting damning secrets. Evidence of her second sister's dealings with bandits to sabotage family tea farms, a secret letter implicating another in treachery—all were gathered by her unseen hands, stored away for the perfect moment.
Her performance was flawless. She navigated rooms with practiced uncertainty, her head tilted in a permanent gesture of helpless listening. She offered no opinions, posed no threat, and was often forgotten in the corner during family councils. This very oblivion was her weapon. While her sisters openly clashed for the Matriarch's favor and the prestige associated with the Tea Bone legend, Yunshu wove her web in silence. The family, obsessed with their public image and internal power struggles, never thought to question the narrative of the pitiful, blind fifth daughter. They were the actors on stage; she was the director waiting in the wings.
Cracks in the Myth
The fragile facade of family unity began to splinter around the myth of the Tea Bone. Rong Shanbao, burdened by the truth of her sister Yunwan's condition, attempted to protect her, which only made her appear as the Matriarch's complicit favorite. During a tense ancestral ceremony, the second sister, Rong Yunxi (荣筠溪), publicly challenged Shanbao's legitimacy. The Matriarch swiftly silenced her, citing the violation of clan rules. The underlying truth, however, was festering. The Matriarch herself knew the real Tea Bone was the ostracized Yunwan, but the family's reputation was paramount. The myth had to be maintained, even if it meant perpetuating a cruel lie and sacrificing the well-being of a vulnerable child.
The breaking point arrived with a family scandal. When Shanbao insisted on bringing the neglected Yunwan back into the household, the Matriarch publicly slapped her, disgracing her and driving her from the mansion. This act of expulsion was the signal Yunshu had waited for. The moment Shanbao's figure disappeared beyond the grand gates, Yunshu's long theatre of blindness ended. She removed her eye-patch, revealing sharp, clear eyes. To the stunned servants, she simply stated, "The play is over." She then stepped into the void left by Shanbao, becoming the Matriarch's new, devoted attendant, her sight miraculously "restored."
The Reckoning
Now in a position of trust, Rong Yunshu executed her revenge with surgical precision. She conspired with an outsider, Yang Yitang (杨易棠), to orchestrate a robbery of the family vault, framing the exiled Shanbao for the crime. In a masterful act of manipulation, when the furious Matriarch moved to punish Shanbao, Yunshu threw herself between them, suffering a gashing wound on her shoulder. Her tearful pleas to spare Shanbao only cemented the latter's perceived guilt. This "loyal" sacrifice endeared her further to the Matriarch. However, an investigator later discovered a crucial detail: the wound was self-inflicted. Yunshu's blood was just another prop in her final, devastating act.
Her ultimate move was not just financial ruin, but a spiritual desecration. She forced her mother's memorial tablet into the family ancestral hall, a space forbidden to someone of her mother's low status. Smiling coldly at the Matriarch, she declared, "See? The servant's daughter has entered after all." In this moment of triumph, she mirrored the very tyranny she sought to destroy, becoming a new iteration of the ruthless ruler she hated.
The cycle of vengeance was complete. In a corner of that same hall, a deaf and mute old servant—who decades earlier had been the Matriarch's lover before she poisoned and disfigured him for betrayal—watched it all, a single tear tracking through his ruined face. The "tea bone" was never a person; it was the family's own corrupt soul, a legacy of consuming its own for power and pride, now finally turned to ash.
