Xiqu

Moi Yuk-bing, a lady who has always been ill, has a step-mother, Chu Ming-fung, who treats her badly, so bad that the step-mother even tries to replace Yuk-bing with her own daughter, Moi Yim-tsu, as the bride of the promising Lui Ngan-chau. Deeply in love with Yuk-bing, Ngan-chau insists it has to be Yuk-bing or there will be no bride.

On the wedding day, Yuk-bing drinks a cup of analeptic too strong for her by accident hence starts vomiting blood. Ngan-chau’s father, who hated Yuk-bing’s illness all along, takes the chance to order his son to marry her sister, Yim-tsu, instead. Ngan-chau makes up a reason, saying he has urgent business in the army, then rushes out the door before the marriage is done. Seeing the left alone Yim-tsu desolated, Lau Si-yun, the scholar who has always been admiring Yim-tsu, comforts her, from the chair then to the bed.

After the night, the bride in affair finds a book on her desk, the book of chastity. She thinks it must be her sister’s doing hence plans to end her for good. Her plan is to poison Yuk-bing by sending cakes, but it goes away, her own mother eats the cakes and leaves none for her step-sister.

Finding only her dead mother and Yuk-bing in the whole house, it is only logical to switch the blame of murder to Yuk-bing… (Screenwriter: Poon Yat-fan)