Gu Qingyan, a modern forensic pathologist, transmigrates after an accident into the body of a concubine-born daughter of a marquis's household. Her birth mother was poisoned by her stepmother, and the moment she opens her eyes, she faces a desperate fate: taking her elder half-sister's place as bride to the “sickly prince,” who is rumored to have less than three months to live.
On their wedding night, just as she prepares to spend her days as a widow, her husband, who had been coughing as if at death's door, pins her beneath him and lets out a low laugh. “After pretending to be ill for so many years, I finally have an interesting princess consort.”
From then on, she is forced into a carefully laid game of intrigue. Her husband, Xiao Han, the regent, appears to be an idle prince on the verge of death, but in truth he is the mastermind controlling the realm from behind the scenes. He hides behind bouts of bloody coughing and turns his sickbed into a chessboard, eliminating political enemies one by one.
Gu Qingyan had planned to coast through life, but discovers that her death in her previous life is closely tied to the schemes in this world. Using modern forensic knowledge, she solves strange cases; with anatomical theory, she helps her husband plot his moves. They go from testing each other to entrusting each other with their lives, from playing at love to falling deeply in love.
When the truth comes to light, she learns that her transmigration was no accident, and that the “good-for-nothing man” from her previous life has also been reborn in this world. Amid the struggle for the throne, a love-hate affair spanning time and space grows ever more intense.
