On a snowy night in the Great Yin Dynasty, Shen Jinghan, Marquis of Zhenbei, imprisoned Su Qingluan as his concubine on charges of treason. She cursed him through bloodied tears, wishing that he would spend eternity loving someone he could never have. That kiss born of hatred became a bond spanning a thousand years.
A thousand years later, Su Qingluan, a graduate student in history, transmigrates through an ancient painting and tumbles into the arms of a CEO who looks exactly like Shen Jinghan. Suspecting she is a pawn, he locks her in his villa and binds her freedom with a contract. Forced kisses and suffocating entanglements become part of daily life. She hates him as the enemy from her past life and tries to escape again and again, but he always catches her. Gripping her waist, he gazes at her with burning eyes. “On my turf, where do you think you can run?”
The ancient painting becomes a key to traveling between lives. At their touch, visions of the past emerge: him cradling her cold body in the snow, and whispering after kissing her in the dungeon, “You have to stay alive if you want to hate me.” Their entanglement grows more intense in this life. He holds her hand all night when she has a high fever and takes a bullet to protect her, but a misunderstanding also crushes her dignity. She struggles against his obsession, yet her defenses crumble when he breaks a bone protecting her.
A hidden message reveals that the massacre of the Su family was an emperor’s plot, and that his torment in their past life was actually an attempt to protect her at the cost of his own life. When a box of unsent letters lays bare their deep love across two lifetimes, her cinnabar mole is revealed to be the mark of reincarnation branded by the blood of his heart. Her hatred melts away, and love grows wild.
He turns his back on worldly luxury for her and fumbles his way through the nursery. She lets go of her resentment and gently pats his back when nightmares wake him. The cries of their twins, a boy and a girl, bear witness to their happy ending, while the opposing figures in the ancient painting become an embracing silhouette. Beneath the stars, he kisses her hand. “Qingluan, in every life to come, I’ll never let you go again.”
