Strangers Beneath the Red Walls

Under the Red Walls, Strangers Walk Together

After overworking herself to death, modern office worker Su Qing wakes to find she's become Su Qingyan, the legitimate daughter of the Minister of Revenue in the Great Zhou dynasty. She was born into this world with memories of her twenty-one years in the modern era, and has kept them hidden in the family compound for sixteen years.

She thinks she's the only “outsider,” until at the Empress Dowager's birthday banquet, the jade hairpin left by her mother becomes the token of love that the third prince, Zhao Heng, gives to the prime minister's daughter. A sudden frame-up draws her into the whirlpool of court intrigue. At the critical moment, the unruly heir to the Marquis of Zhenbei, Xie Jingxing, sends her a message from across time using a sprig of lavender and a paper clip.

“You're from the twenty-first century too?”

A countdown suddenly appears on her wrist. A signature in simplified Chinese turns up in the imperial study. The Keepers of the Clock mercilessly eliminate “outsiders.” A meteorite in the Imperial Observatory conceals a rift in time and space... Two souls from the modern world are forced to stand together amid the schemes and power struggles behind the red palace walls.

He says he'll help her find a way home, but just as she begins to trust him, the countdown exposes his lie. She thinks she can sever her ties to the ancient world, only to discover that the modern world has long been shrouded by the shadow of the time rift. As the Keepers of the Clock hunt them across two eras, and Zhao Heng's gentle facade conceals an even deeper secret, must these two “outsiders” join forces to break the laws of time and space, or choose their own destinies between love, hate, and the road home?

Beneath the red walls, every step is fraught with danger. They are each other's salvation, and each other's undoing. This mystery, spanning sixteen years and beginning with a soul born into another era, will ultimately stake the fates of two worlds on one gamble: whether they can journey together through life and death.