Wang Muxue is the only legitimate daughter of Wang Shaoan, tutor to the Crown Prince of Beiling. When she was born, a sage declared that whoever won her would win the realm. Her father tried desperately to keep this secret, but soon the whole city knew. Though raised in a family of scholars, she is skilled with a soft whip. Xiao Yanzhu is the Crown Prince of Nanzhao. With his maternal family in decline, he was sent to Beiling as a hostage. Hoping to return to Nanzhao one day, he helps the Beiling prince Zhao Anchuan compete for the throne.
Wang Muxue, however, falls deeply in love with Xiao Yanzhu. After he rejects her proposal, she follows her father’s arrangement and marries Zheng Qiu, but Zheng Qiu dies mysteriously. Overnight, the capital’s most eligible young woman is branded a husband-killer. To silence the rumors, Xiao Yanzhu steps forward and asks the King of Beiling to decree their marriage. They wed as she had hoped, and afterward Wang Muxue spares no effort to help him. But after years of marriage, she still has no children. One day, she discovers that she is pregnant. As she prepares to tell him, she finds that Xiao Yanzhu has killed her father and intends to kill her too. She narrowly escapes, and thus begins her path of revenge.
