Blades Behind the Dance

Sheng Jinning is the youngest daughter of a general's household and the most indulged. The city falls to the northern army. Her mother and aunts are taken and abused holding the soldiers off the younger ones, and her father and brothers leave the city and abandon every woman in the family. To stay alive, Sheng Jinning takes them all into a singing and dancing house. They perform, they smile at customers, and out of sight they train to fight. She uses the money from the house to keep the relatives fed. Years later the father and brothers come back. They do not know where the money came from, and they say the women have shamed the family name, and they intend to kill her and the others to settle it. Sheng Jinning meets them with a blade in her hand this time, standing in front of her sisters.