[A quick-witted heroine who plays the fool to outsmart everyone x a brilliant, tragic wheelchair-bound strategist]
[A passionate political romance sparked by a begonia]
Shen Shiyi, the second daughter of the Shen family, is a laughingstock among the powerful in Bianjing.
She is often seen in a mud-stained homespun dress, and once got chased down the whole street after smashing the Han family's betrothal gifts.
Bullied by her stepmother, looked down on by her elder sister, and let down by her father, she has become the family outcast.
But no one knows that her seemingly foolish nature conceals the sharp edge she has kept hidden since she was kidnapped at six.
Han Xun, the eldest legitimate son of the Han family, is as deep as a river and almost preternaturally clever.
A peerless strategist, he has sealed himself away in ice, yet commands the board from the narrow confines of his wheelchair.
He is a reformer amid the undercurrents of court politics, and a prisoner of his own emotions.
When his father pressures him to accept his fate, he roars, “I, Han Xun, have wept and suffered, but I have never been afraid. My life is mine to rule. How can I let fate decide it for me?!”
The nightmare of falling off a cliff at ten and being abandoned by his parents, who left him crippled, has made him distrustful of sincerity.
But a “foolish girl” who tucked a begonia into the gap in his wheelchair shatters half a lifetime of loneliness.
At first, she uses the begonia to stir his heart; later, she takes advantage of his status as her “brother-in-law” to find a way to survive and escape.
At first, he sees her as a pawn, but once love takes root, he keeps pushing her away.
Yet what begins as a relationship of convenience becomes a relentless struggle between lies and life and death.
When political storms break, with patriarchal schemes and court rivalries closing in, he is trapped in a dead end.
Then this “foolish girl” storms in clutching medical books and evidence, every trace of foolishness gone from her eyes:
“Han Xun, I will be your legs. You protect the realm, and I will protect you.”
Only then does he understand that the begonia that shattered his loneliness was never an accident...
