A broken jade hairpin hides the most painful secret of the palace.
Shen Qingwu has been in the palace for three years, wearing plain silver hairpins and tying up his hair. He just wants to live a stable life. However, because his eyebrows resemble those of the late Queen Duanhui, he is drawn into the center of the whirlpool of power. She picked up Concubine Shu's broken jade hairpin - it was carved by the emperor himself before he ascended the throne, and he had promised to make her the most noble woman in the world. But when Concubine Shu's family was wronged, the emperor admired the lotus in his new favorite palace, and allowed the broken hairpin to collect dust on the palace road.
The emperor gave her a mutton-fat jade hosta, set with pigeon's blood rubies, which was so luxurious that it dazzled the eyes. He just hoped that she would wise up and shut up. But she returned the broken hairpin and the jade hairpin together: "Broken things should go back to where they belong."
This move broke through the emperor's hypocrisy and also raised suspicions about the sudden death of Queen Duanhui. With the step-by-step pressing of the Li family's relatives, the secret help of Prince An, and the tearful entreaties of Concubine Shu in the Jingxin Garden, the plain silver hairpin given by her mother in her hand gradually revealed the truth hidden in the mezzanine - it turned out that the queen's death had already laid the foundation for the collapse of the palace wall.
When the broken hairpin pieced together the scars, and when the plain hairpin reflected the moonlight, Shen Qingwu understood: the most rare thing in the deep palace is not the favor, but the courage to stick to one's heart and return the broken jade to its place even if it is run over by fate. And what was trapped by that palace wall was not only the woman's youth, but also the regrets that the emperor could never make up for.
