When Yun Zhaoyue leaped from the cliff, she wasn’t thinking about death, but freedom. As the Yun family’s legitimate daughter, she was alive, yet her family had long since “buried” her. After her mother died of illness, her father let her stepmother imprison her in a remote courtyard. Now they even planned to marry her off as the second wife of a sixty-year-old Minister of War.
She never expected to find a young man in green robes making tea beside the deep pool below the cliff. He looked up at her without surprise and said coolly, “If you’re going to die, don’t get my fish dirty.”
Xiao Linyuan never expected this madwoman who came falling out of the sky to be the wild card that would stir up his stagnant life. On the surface, he is a regent with power over the entire court. In truth, he is the Xiao family’s dirtiest secret: the eldest legitimate son who supposedly died in an “accident” twenty years ago. Now he lives under his elder brother’s name, while his parents look at him with hatred in their eyes.
An unexpected assassination attempt forces two wounded souls to travel together. She discovers that this “merchant” can easily command the border troops; he realizes this “young lady” knows the court’s most closely guarded secrets. When their identities are exposed, he grips her chin and sneers, “So you’re the Yun family’s legitimate daughter who’s supposed to marry an old man.” She slaps him back. “And you’re the regent who approved the marriage decree.”
From mutual loathing to finding warmth in each other’s arms, from fugitives on the run to standing side by side at the pinnacle of the imperial court. When Yun Zhaoyue stands in the throne hall holding the Phoenix Seal, and Xiao Linyuan removes the mask he has worn for twenty years, they finally understand: some encounters are both an abyss and a salvation.
