Fu Yali is the illegitimate daughter her mother, Fu Shumei, hid away in Taohua Village. She grows up surrounded by green mountains and the medicinal scents of her grandmother’s home, believing she will spend her whole life in the countryside, until news arrives that her grandmother is seriously ill. Thinking she has a chance to make things right with her family, she walks straight into the trap her mother has carefully laid.
Using her grandmother’s health as leverage, Fu Shumei forces her to take her younger sister Mo Yiluo’s place and marry Gong Ze, the reclusive head of the Gong family in Yunhai City, who is rumored to have been paralyzed from the waist down six months ago.
The moment Fu Yali steps into the Gong family mansion, she sees the truth behind this marriage: though Gong Ze holds immense power, he is trapped in a bitter family feud, and his stepmother, Bai Xinyue, is determined to destroy him.
Two people trapped in equally desperate circumstances silently strike a deal. Under the guise of husband and wife, they protect each other as they struggle to survive amid the treacherous currents of the Gong household.
Fu Yali accidentally uncovers the secret of Gong Ze’s birth: the current matriarch of the Gong family was the one who killed his birth mother. After a video captures a confrontation in which they nearly destroy each other, Gong Ze finally lets down his guard for the first time and realizes that Fu Yali is not Bai Xinyue’s lackey.
But fate has no intention of going easy on them. Her mother deliberately conceals the news of her grandmother’s death, and when Fu Yali secretly returns to Taohua Village to pay her respects, she is kidnapped on a mountain road.
When Gong Ze, away on business overseas, hears what has happened, he loses his composure. Without hesitation, he does whatever the kidnappers demand, asking only that she be kept safe.
