On the night of the Lantern Festival in the Great Jing Dynasty, members of the imperial family and nobility gathered at the palace’s Green Sparrow Terrace to admire the lanterns. Yet Shen Qinglan, the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Zhenguo, mysteriously vanished from the plum grove beside the terrace. Shen Qinglan was the Bright and Wise Commandery Princess, personally titled by the emperor. Clever and perceptive, she had only just become engaged to the son of the Minister of Personnel three days earlier. Her disappearance sent shock waves through the otherwise calm court. All that remained at the scene was a shattered Green Sparrow jade pendant, a keepsake of the Shen family, and a trail of disordered footprints in the snow that abruptly ended in the plum grove, as if the wind and snow had erased them from existence.
To find her sister, Shen Qingwu, Shen Qinglan’s twin, had no choice but to infiltrate the Duke’s residence and the palace under her sister’s identity. Frail since childhood, she had been raised at a separate estate, and few people even knew she existed. Using her sister’s name, she navigates the complicated relationships between the great families and deals with her sister’s not-yet-officially-wed “fiance,” all while secretly investigating the clues. But she soon discovers that her sister’s disappearance was no accident. It is connected to a case from three years ago that someone deliberately covered up, and even the seemingly harmless people around her may be hiding secrets.
