Flowers in the Mirror: Ashes Behind Vermilion Gates

In the middle years of the Great Jing dynasty, Su Qingyuan, the legitimate daughter of the Su family in the capital, was in love with her cousin, Xie Mingxuan. But her family used her as a bargaining chip and married her into the powerful Lin family, making her the wife of its legitimate son, Lin Yanci. Behind the high walls of the grand estate, she witnessed the hypocrisy and scheming concealed beneath rigid etiquette, the coldness of relatives turning against one another for profit, and the struggles hidden beneath her husband Lin Yanci's seemingly indifferent exterior.

As the Su, Xie, Lin, and Gu families were drawn into a struggle for imperial power, cheating in the civil service examinations and false accusations of collusion with the enemy followed one after another. The glory of the past receded like the tide. Su Qingyuan tried to protect what was true to her through the storm, only to watch Xie Mingxuan die fighting on the frontier, the Lin family fall overnight, and herself become a prisoner in the imperial palace.

When the last roof tile of the grand estate fell, the flowers in the mirror, the moon on the water, and the love of youth all became ashes in the end. This is not only the tragedy of one woman, but also a lament for an era and a class nearing their end.