Smoky Bonds of Marriage

Xu Yan and Qin Lie are married because the two families want the alliance. She is a reporter, he is the son of a wealthy house. After the wedding they argue constantly. Xu Yan takes him for a man who does not love her. Qin Lie takes her for a woman whose heart is set on someone else. He does love her, and the misunderstanding makes him cold one day and warm the next. Worn out, Xu Yan asks for a divorce. The divorce does not end it. Qin Lie keeps turning up where she works, at interviews and at family gatherings, and the meetings run between open quarrels and things neither of them says. Mu Qing gets between them, undermining Xu Yan at work and trying to break the two of them apart. Then there is the matter of Xu Yan's birth. She is not Xu Jing's daughter. Qin Lie learns this and begins quietly gathering evidence of the Xu family's crimes, and Xu Jing is brought before the law. Xu Yan handles her own troubles at work on her professional record, with Qin Lie backing her at the points that matter. When an engagement between Xu Yan and Xing Zhen is arranged, Qin Lie sets out to stop it, and at the ceremony Mu Qing comes at Xu Yan with a knife.