The Deer and the Cauldron Chronicles

Set in the jianghu of Qing Dynasty during the Kangxi era. Though outwardly a time of peace and prosperity, beneath the surface the Heaven and Earth Society, remnants of the Dragon Sect, imperial spies, Western powers, and the great martial factions all contend against one another. Wei Xiaobao has already married seven wives. To save his wrongly accused Heaven and Earth Society brothers, Xiaobao infiltrates a traveling opera troupe and becomes its temporary clown. The troupe leader intends to give the leading actress to a local tyrant, so Xiaobao rewrites the script on the spot and publicly denounces the tyrant as a "reincarnated turtle bastard." In the chaos, he seizes the actress's personal jade pendant as a hostage—only to discover that this pendant is the token Shuang'er lost years ago.