After being struck by lightning and killed, 22nd-century unlucky soul Shen Xi awakens in the body of the least-favored concubine-born daughter of a marquis's household. Her birth mother died young, her legal mother is cruel, and her older half-sister makes life difficult for her. She struggles to survive in this rigidly hierarchical household. Then she meets Hou Mochen, the powerful chief eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, who enjoys the emperor's deep favor.
At their first meeting, he watches coldly as her half-sister pushes her into a lotus pond, doing nothing to help. The second time, he “happens” to pass by just as her legal mother is about to beat her to death, saving her with a casual remark. The third time, he gives her a bottle of wound salve, his fingertips icy as he says, “Third Miss Shen, in this household, you have to learn to pick yourself up.”
Shen Xi despises this cold, gloomy eunuch. But when she is drugged and sent to the old prince's bed, when she is falsely accused of stealing an imperial gift, and when someone plots to disfigure her, an unseen hand always intervenes from the shadows to resolve the crisis.
Only later does she learn that from the moment Hou Mochen first saw her, he recognized the defiance in her eyes as something that didn't belong to this era. Every “coincidence” was a carefully calculated move. Every “chance encounter” was his quiet protection.
And he did all this for no reason other than
(Like her???) Female lead: A huge question mark
