After her sect is destroyed, the genius cultivator Shen Miao disguises herself as the illegitimate daughter of a merchant family and is married off to the Prince Regent's household as a substitute bride, supposedly to bring him good fortune. Her groom, Xiao Jingheng, seems frail and sickly, but is actually a descendant of an immortal lineage afflicted by a strange curse. On the night they meet, the thunder-qi that escapes from her fingertips turns out to be the only glimmer of hope he's had in three years of finding a way to break the curse.
And so, life in the prince's household takes a sudden turn. When the concubines try to poison her, she whips out a “poison detection talisman.” When she gets shortchanged in the household infighting, she invents “fasting pills flavored like spicy hot pot” that take the entire inner court by storm. Everyone laughs at her merchant-family crudity, while she's already turned the back residence into a technical workshop with her “scientific cultivation.”
Yet beneath the warm and genteel household squabbles, the Noble Consort colludes with demonic cultivators, the Crown Prince conspires with various sects, and forces from every side infiltrate the household, all seeking the Heavenly Secrets Jade Pendant that can open an ancient secret realm. Shen Miao soon discovers that an ancient demon is sealed beneath the manor, that the massacre of her sect is intertwined with the manor's hidden secrets, and that the curse within Xiao Jingheng is the key to reopening the immortal realm, with the fate of all three realms at stake.
When the jade pendant appears and the seal begins to weaken, the two go from a contract couple wary of one another to allies bound by fate, sharing life and death. See how a genius girl uses her scientific imagination to turn cultivation on its head, and joins the cold-faced prince in laughing and bickering her way through household rivalries and power games across the three realms, until they must make a world-shaking choice between personal love and the greater good.
An adventure that begins with a substitute marriage, a love that begins with scheming, and an unconventional legend told with humor and twists.
