Yun Qinghe carries the half-worn red marriage contract her grandmother entrusted to her on her deathbed. With a faded canvas bag on her back, she leaves the old country house surrounded by mint and mugwort and steps into the Gu family’s courtyard home within Beijing’s Second Ring Road. The worn characters on the contract read, “Yun family’s Qinghe, Gu family’s Shiyan,” their faded ink mirroring this “fulfillment of a promise.” Her fiancé, Gu Shiyan, whom she has never met, lifts an impatient brow and regards her with undisguised contempt. “Country girl, don’t make trouble.”
She doesn’t argue. She quietly settles into the west wing, carrying her canvas bag to classes at Peking University’s medical school by day. No one knows that beneath her coarse clothes is a specially appointed professor. At night, she uses silver needles to treat Gu Shiyan’s old injuries. When someone suffers a medical emergency at a banquet, she pulls the silver hairpin from her hair and saves a heart disease tycoon with her bare hands. In a moment of chaos at the racetrack, she drives a backup car and brings the danger to a precise stop. Even the piano melody she hums beneath the moon makes Gu Shiyan, who has seen it all, feel his heart stir.
As the layers of her “country girl” identity fall away, the truth emerges: she is an international gold medalist in acupuncture, an honorary Cambridge researcher, and a woman skilled in everything from racing to piano. Even the jade pendant engraved with mysterious symbols in her wooden box begins to reveal its secrets. Watching her water the medicinal garden, Gu Shiyan’s Adam’s apple bobs. “That marriage agreement… how about we give it a serious try?”
Yun Qinghe turns back with a smile, the courtyard’s crabapple blossoms reflected in her eyes. “Mr. Gu, let me make one thing clear first: I’m not here to marry into the Gu family.”
