I wielded the history books like a blade, laying open the twilight of a dynasty, yet I could not cut through the frozen snow in your eyes.
I am Lin Weiyang. I know every turning point and dead end of the seventeen years at the end of the Ming dynasty, yet I failed to foresee just one thing: falling in love with you.
Lin Weiyang, a PhD in history, made an absurd wish beneath the old locust tree where Chongzhen hanged himself: "If only I could meet you when you were young."
When she opened her eyes again, she had become Zhou Yushu, the child bride of ten-year-old Zhu Youjian.
The imperial palace was an abyss. He was an unfavored Fifth Prince, growing up amid schemes and cold stares, a frightened bird at every shadow.
And with the perspective and heartache of someone from four hundred years in the future, she took his cold hand:
"Don't be afraid. I'll stay with you."
She had seen the lonely noose on Coal Hill, but she had never seen:
the boy's trembling brush beneath the lamplight, the wildfire burning in the emperor's eyes,
the backbone breaking inch by inch beneath his dragon robe, and in his final moments, when he looked back at her,
that gaze, cleansed of all suspicion and as clear as when they first met.
"Your Majesty, if you could live it all again..."
"I would still go to Coal Hill." He brushed the white hair at her temples. "But this time, I would hold your hand tight."
Redemption and destruction walk the same road; deep love and fate are enemies.
Can she, having transmigrated across four hundred years, carve a ray of light through history's unyielding walls?
"The history books say Chongzhen was stubborn and suspicious."
"But my boy had simply seen too soon how cold people's hearts could be."
"This time, I won't save the Ming. I only want to warm your winter."
But winter lasted too long, longer than seventeen years, longer than four hundred years,
long enough for Coal Hill's snow to cover the rest of my life.
