Knowing Her Heart, Binding His

As the modern-day Shen Zhiyi dies consumed by hatred, the red mark around her wrist, left by the rope used when she was abducted, becomes a lifeline binding her across death. When she opens her eyes, she has become Su Wanqing, an illegitimate daughter of the Yongning Dynasty whom her father has handed over to a local gentryman as a sacrificial bride to bring him good fortune. In a carriage on a snowy night, the bloody memories of being abducted in her previous life overlap with the humiliation of being traded away in this one. The red cord grows hot, revealing the sinister face of the gentryman’s steward, identical to that of the kidnapper from years ago. The shackles of fate have ensnared her once more, in a different form. Shi Yanzhi, the Shi family’s young master who feigns madness to avoid trouble, is the first person who can see the red cord around her wrist. His question, “Does it hurt where it’s tied?” makes two souls abandoned by fate collide in an instant. He wants to uncover the truth behind his father’s fall from a cliff; she wants to break free from a destiny that leaves her at others’ mercy. The red cord draws them together as allies, but on their escape they discover even more shocking secrets: women the Shi family bought who supposedly “died of illness,” the sordid dealings between the Crown Prince and the prefect, and even her birth mother’s death are all closely linked to a trafficking network. From a gentryman’s estate to the storms of the capital, from Qingzhou’s hidden secrets to a coup in the capital, the red cord grows ever stronger. It can not only revisit the past and warn of danger, but also bind together the grudges and loves of two lifetimes. When the Crown Prince takes hostages to threaten them, and the red cord reveals all the evidence of his pushing someone off a cliff and ordering kidnappings, Shen Zhiyi finally understands: what traps people is never the rope, but the heart that dares not break free. A bond spanning two lifetimes, a story of redemption. She makes a comeback with memories of her past life, while he protects her in secret, concealing his royal identity. At the end of the lifeline cord lie exposed crimes, a radiant rebirth, and two hearts bound tightly together across life and death.