In the twenty-seventh year of Jiajing's reign, the sunset often dyed the red walls of Zichen Palace, but it could not hide the turbulent undercurrent under the court. Emperor Jiajing, who was addicted to cultivating immortals, used elixirs as a guise to practice the art of imperial checks and balances, causing Yandang and Qingliu to repeatedly pull back and forth on the balance of power; beyond the border, Tatars knocked on the pass, Japanese pirates invaded, the tribute system in Southeast Asia was crumbling, and geopolitical wars and court disputes intertwined and spread.
An astrological prophecy from the Qin Tian Jian, "Ying Huo Shou Xin", broke the surface calm. Shen Qingci, the daughter of a royal censor, sneaks into the Qintian Prison under an assumed name in order to find out the truth about her father's disappearance. She accidentally unlocks the "Secret Records of Stars" left by Liu Bowen in the early Ming Dynasty, revealing the hidden prophecy of "the destiny is restored, but there is a beetle inside." The Yan Party relies on prophecies to build momentum, Qingliu uses the people's hearts as a shield, King Yu hides his hidden edge, and the mysterious alchemist is erratic. The so-called "mandate of destiny" is just the power in the hands of the emperor, a cover for the rebellion of powerful ministers, and it is also the stable hope in the hearts of the people.
From the machinations of the palace walls in the capital to the iron-blooded fighting at the border, from the Japanese pirate lair in the southeast to the ancient temple of Yanyu in the south of the Yangtze River, Shen Qingci deals with the stars and people's hearts, choosing between power and morality. When the "cancer" of the strict party's corruption is connected to the black network of Japanese pirate smuggling, when the destiny prophecy collides with the geopolitical game, when Jiajing's imperial mentality encounters the ultimate truth that "the destiny is the people's heart", a chess game related to the national destiny of the Ming Dynasty quietly settled on the mountains and rivers illuminated by the sunset.
