A Spring Breeze Through the Brocade Palace

[A scheming marquis × a clear-eyed beauty. He weaves a tender net, luring her deeper into it step by step.] Shen Qingyun heads north to seek refuge with relatives and becomes the most overlooked young cousin in the Yongning Marquis’s household. She is cautious at every turn, unaware that she has already been caught in the sights of those unfathomable eyes. Second Young Master Cheng Cong is the dream lover of countless noblewomen in the capital, yet he treats her differently from everyone else. Was his midnight rescue a coincidence? Was the Noble Consort’s recognition of her at the spring banquet fate? Then, in a hidden compartment in his study, she finds a kingfisher-feather hairpin that belonged to her mother, along with a red slip bearing her birth date and time. It turns out every “chance encounter” was a move in a game he had carefully planned. He personally sends her into the imperial palace and smiles as he sighs, “It’s safe in the palace. Wait for me to come get you.” But just as she begins to win the Noble Consort’s favor, he taps on her window late one night. “Qingyun, it seems you’re… so far away from me.” Later, at an imperial banquet, she appears in splendid robes and presents a strategy before the emperor, stunning the entire hall. In full view of everyone, he loses control and grabs her wrist. “I gave you the path to success you wanted. I can even fight to make you empress. Why are you still running away?” She smiles and pulls her hand free, her eyes calm and unruffled. “Second Cousin, from the day you treated me like a chess piece, you should have known…” “The one moving the pieces should be most careful… of the day a chess piece turns around and pierces the board.”