[A cautious yet brave heroine + age gap + forced love + growing up together + older woman-younger man romance + the scumbag husband tries to win her back]
Wan Xuezhen gives birth to her second daughter, but the baby is already dead when she comes into the world. Outside the door, she hears her mother-in-law and husband discussing what to do:
“She gives birth to nothing but useless girls, and her father was exiled. Give her this medicine and tell everyone she cried herself sick during her confinement and died.”
Her husband, Wei Yunze, is so spineless that he actually goes along with his mother's plan.
Wan Xuezhen wipes away her tears. She has to find a way for her daughter, her father, and her gravely ill mother in the thatched hut to survive.
“Mother-in-law, I'd like to go to the Prince of Yu's household as a wet nurse and secure a good future for Yunze.”
Wan Xuezhen enters the Prince of Yu's household, where the women of the inner quarters, from attendants and concubines to secondary consorts and the princess consort, fight with words as sharp as blades. And the man at the top has improper designs on her.
She fiercely protects the baby in her arms. Who would have thought that, as the child grows, he would clear her family's name, appoint her elder brother and nephew as the empire's two greatest pillars, and grant her honor and glory, making her the first chief palace woman in the dynasty.
The boy who grows from a little baby into the heir apparent, imperial grandson, crown prince, and emperor has no interest in women.
She understands this handsome ruler at the peak of power less and less, until one day he lifts her chin.
“Chief Palace Woman Wan, is there nothing between us but the hierarchy of ruler and subject?”
Terrified, Wan Xuezhen drops to her knees and hangs herself to atone for her crime.
But that very night, a grand wedding celebration is held at Jianzhang Palace.
The emperor has only one empress in his heart, Consort Wan, and even vows never to appoint an empress.
