In the year when Shen Zhaoning passed away, the Anyuan Marquis Mansion was still the most prestigious family in Chang'an.
Three years later, his father was imprisoned and his family property was confiscated. She fell from the clouds into the mud and lived in a dilapidated house with drafts on all sides. She had to think twice about buying a piece of charcoal.
Everyone said that the former most beautiful woman might not survive this winter.
On the sixteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, heavy snow closed the city.
Pei Ye, the king of Zhenbei, stood in front of her, his black cloak covered with snow, his eyebrows as cold as a knife tempered by ice.
He is the youngest king with a different surname in the dynasty, the son of the eldest princess, and the nephew of the Holy Emperor. At the age of twelve, he attacked a noble, defeated the enemy at the age of fifteen, and was awarded the title of general at the age of nineteen - there was no one in Chang'an whom he could not control.
He imprisoned her in a courtyard called "Snow Sound".
In that courtyard, there are old plum blossoms, a warm pavilion, a pen and inkstone with her name engraved on it, and traces left by someone in the past.
He didn't say why, and she didn't ask.
But every snowy night, he would stand outside her window for a long time and then leave.
She thought he just wanted to tame a bird.
Until another person appears.
Xiao Yizhou is back. The boy who said ten years ago that he would take her to the south of the Yangtze River to see apricot blossoms is now the number one scholar in a new subject and a close minister of the emperor.
He stood in the snow, holding the old umbrella painted with apricot flowers, and said to her: "Zhao Ning, come with me."
One wants to imprison her, and the other wants to take her away.
One said "You are my life" and the other said "I have been waiting for you for ten years".
