“Either let me go, or take my corpse with you to the marriage alliance.”
On her wedding day, the proudest princess of Li Kingdom presses a gold hairpin to her throat and leaps from the carriage taking her to a political marriage.
She flees for her life through wind and snow, until she collides with a woodcutter in the snow. His name is Ye Sheng, a wanderer with nothing to his name, yet he gives her half of the only piece of wheat cake he has.
He doesn't know she's a runaway princess, and she doesn't know he's a blade lost to the martial world.
Two fugitives travel from a snowy night at the border to the misty rains of Jiangnan, from solitary smoke beyond the frontier to the summit of a snow-capped mountain.
He teaches her to wield a sword, and she teaches him to read. He carves her a hairpin from a willow branch, and she mends his worn-out clothes.
It isn't until assassins break down the door of an abandoned temple, and a poisoned arrow flies toward Ye Sheng, that she finally understands: this escape was never just about the two of them.
The most closely guarded bloodline of Li Kingdom's imperial family flows through her veins: Xuan Yin True Qi, the only key to the treasure left behind by Li Kingdom's founding emperor.
And her gentle mother, the empress, buried a shocking secret twenty years ago: there has never been just one Princess Li Man.
