After pulling all-nighters until the early hours for seven days straight, overworked Lin Xiaoxi drops dead and transmigrates as a concubine-born daughter of the Marquis of Zhenyuan in the Great Yong dynasty. Because she looks about half like the emperor Rong Yuan's beloved Su Yunshu, she's sent to the palace as “tribute” and becomes the “human figurine” of a tyrant who “kills stand-ins without blinking.” The original owner drowned herself, forcing Lin Xiaoxi to take on this high-risk “work assignment”: imitate the late beloved and survive in the man-eating imperial palace.
But fate insists on pulling her into a vortex of reincarnation. She faces death five times, each one shattering her hopes of getting lucky:
The first time, she acts timid and imitates Su Yunshu, then learns that Rong Yuan and the monk Liaochen have chosen her to serve as a “vessel” in some kind of “reincarnation ritual.” Unwilling to accept her fate, she plans to fake her death and escape, but the ritual suddenly spirals out of control. Energy tears her apart, and she falls into a cycle of reincarnation and transmigration;
The second time, she returns with her memories and hides in the cold palace, hoping to become “invisible,” but she still can't escape being chosen as the “vessel.” The energy goes out of control again during the ritual, and she is once more swept into the cycle;
The third time, shaken by her deaths in two previous lives, she tries to defy fate using her memories. After disrupting the ritual, she is killed amid a power struggle by the emperor's maternal relatives. In her final moments, she hears Rong Yuan mutter that the “vessel is tainted,” confirming her central destiny;
The fourth time, she changes her approach and “cooperates” with Rong Yuan, helping him investigate Su Yunshu's death. As they test one another, subtle feelings arise between them. But disaster strikes, and Rong Yuan is forced to push her onto the sacrificial altar. Amid the agony of the sacrifice, she sees the real anguish in the emperor's eyes;
The fifth time, she confronts Rong Yuan and lays out everything about her past lives. Producing Su Yunshu's blood letter and revealing the secret of the jade pendant, she joins forces with Wei Heng, the empress, and others to expose that “the curse was the emperor's own self-hypnosis...
