Ten years after the massacre of the Xie family in the north, Xie Jinglan, an orphan named Shen Yan, entered the imperial capital in the name of a talented scholar from a poor family. At the Qionglin banquet, he and Jiang Jinyue, the legitimate daughter of Shangshu Mansion, became friends over a game of chess. She was soft on the outside and strong on the inside, taking off his guard; he was cautious at every step, but his heart was moved as he got closer. When clues of revenge point to her family, and when his true identity gradually emerges, love and hate become the sharpest edge. Half a piece of jade pendant revealed palace secrets, and the imperial edict of marriage forcibly bound the two. From mutual testing to the collapse of trust, from protecting each other in life and death to working together in desperate situations, they tore through the layers of disguise in the whirlpool of power, and finally saw the shocking conspiracy behind the murder that year. When the dust settled, the two people who had washed away their beauty chose to stay away from the court, holding hands and watching the mountains and rivers shine brightly.
