Shanghai, 1990: the city is rife with intrigue. The Qi family, a shipping powerhouse that made its fortune in the fishing-boat business, has become Shanghai’s dominant force over three generations. Its current head, Qi Tianchen, expanded the family empire from his wheelchair in just three years, taking control of Shanghai’s largest hotel, Huitianlou, and its largest academy, Qichen Academy. His power seems unrivaled, but beneath the glamour, turmoil simmers. Three years ago, at twenty-nine, Qi Tianchen was involved in a so-called “accident” while fighting for control of the family. His legs were left crippled, and the culprit remains unknown. The mysteries only begin to unravel after Mu Xiaoxiao appears. He goes from hating her at first to falling in love with her, but a plot by others leaves him unable to wake Mu Xiaoxiao ever again!
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in the imperial palace, Empress Duan Nianci grows resentful of Emperor Li Ming, whose lust for beauty leaves him indifferent to affairs of state. Disillusioned, she cuts off her hair in front of the court and then dies mysteriously. When she opens her eyes again, she has transmigrated into the body of Qi Tianchen’s wife, Mu Xiaoxiao, a woman notorious in Shanghai for her spoiled, domineering nature and utterly despised by Qi Tianchen. Haunted by old wounds from the harem and trapped in a wealthy family’s tangled affairs, Duan Nianci, living as Mu Xiaoxiao, resolves to use the survival skills she learned in the palace to make the cold-faced tycoon fall for her, while helping Qi Tianchen uncover the truth behind the mysteries. But her efforts leave her unconscious, and when she wakes again... she is no longer in the same world.
