As White as Snow in the Mist

Chang Ding'an, adopted son of the great general, desperately searches for the rare medicine known as the “Northern Frontier Butterfly” to save his poisoned adoptive father, but to no avail. In a blinding snowstorm, he meets a peerlessly beautiful woman named Bai Xue at an abandoned pavilion. She seems like a fairy who has wandered into the mortal world, yet she holds the antidote he has been searching for. In a world torn apart by war, how could a beauty like her be traveling alone with such a treasure? Suspecting she is a spy, he abducts her and keeps her under tight guard. Yet as they spend their days and nights together, he falls deeper and deeper for her. Her beauty lies not only in her appearance, but also in the fragile-seeming resilience and mystery she carries. He tries to lift the veil hiding her secrets, but again and again she rejects his advances and protection. In the end, neither can suppress their true feelings. As undercurrents stir around them, they give themselves to each other, wrapped in tenderness and passion. But their ardor has barely cooled when disaster strikes: his adoptive father demands to take her as a concubine. He thinks his love runs deep, yet under his adoptive father's pressure, he shrinks back in fear. He can only watch as she dons her phoenix coronet and bridal robes and enters the Marquis's mansion, a place as deep and treacherous as the sea. After their marriage, she is subjected to humiliation and abuse. He can only watch in silence, heartbroken and aching, too afraid to fight for her. Then, believing their affair has been exposed and his adoptive father intends to kill him as a sacrifice to rally the troops, he gives in to despair and fury. He raises an army in rebellion, kills his adoptive father with his own hands, and bathes the commander's residence in blood. Just as he thinks he can finally reclaim the woman he loves, he discovers that From the very beginning, it was all a trap carefully woven for her sake. She was no helpless orphan. The medicine she gave him, her approach, her seduction, the wedge she drove between them, the way she provoked him into killing his father: every step was part of her plan to bring down the empire's highest military command on the frontier from within. As he lies in a pool of blood, gazing at her cold, breathtaking face, he finally understands: at their first meeting in the snow, what she gave him was never an antidote. It was the most beautiful and most poisonous blade, one meant to pierce his heart and bring about his ruin.