Snow on the Phoenix Steps: The Disgraced Consort Returns

Three years ago, Su Lingwei, the legitimate daughter of a military family, was sent to the cold palace on charges of treason. She was given a cup of poison, and her entire family was executed. To her dying day, she never knew that the people who framed her were her half-sister Su Lingyue, whom she had treated as a sister, and Emperor Xiao Jingyuan, to whom she had given her heart.

Three years later, Su Lingwei is reborn in the body of Yun Wei, a new palace entrant. The body comes from a humble family and has an ordinary appearance, but those very traits make the perfect disguise. With her memories of her past life, she remembers everyone’s secrets in the harem, every detail of their struggles, the emperor’s suspicion, her half-sister’s hypocrisy, and the faces of those who once kicked her when she was down.

She pretends to be a timid young palace entrant and lies low among the lowest ranks. She uses her memories to avoid the traps that ensnared her in her former life and gets others to eliminate her half-sister’s informants. She seizes overlooked “little opportunities” from her past life, such as resolving an old heartache of the Empress Dowager’s that no one else understood, quietly drawing the attention of those in high places. At a crucial moment, she even beats her half-sister to the punch and foils her scheme to win the emperor’s favor, leaving her with nothing.

When Su Lingyue realizes that this “Yun Wei” keeps working against her and tries to get rid of her once and for all, Su Lingwei stops hiding. Step by step, she exposes Su Lingyue’s true nature and produces a copy of the treason evidence that was destroyed in her past life. She makes the emperor see how wrongly he judged the case back then, and ensures everyone who helped frame the Su family pays the price. Yet at the final step of her revenge, she chooses to leave the center of power. She uses the favor she has earned to clear her family’s name, then walks free from the palace that trapped her in both her lives.