Su Yu, the legitimate daughter of the director of the Imperial Medical Academy, is reborn in the year she turned sixteen. Her half-sister's schemes, her stepmother's viciousness, her father's cold gaze: the people who drove her to a miserable death in her previous life still wear the same hypocritical faces.
But now, she has a medical text left behind by her mother.
The book contains more than medical knowledge. Hidden inside is a bloodstained secret letter. It says her mother did not die of illness, but was poisoned. And the poison came from someone closest to her.
Even more chilling, every time Su Yu is on the verge of death, she returns to the age of sixteen with her memories intact. It is as if something is forcing her to start over again and again, to uncover a truth buried for twenty years.
It is only when the blood of Chun Tao, her personal maid, splashes onto her hands that she finally understands:
What they call being reborn is nothing more than someone dying in her place, again and again.
"You think being reborn is a blessing? It's a curse. Every time you wake up, it means someone has died in your place."
Crown Prince Xiao Jingyan has been struck by a strange poison, and a Soul-Locking Needle has sealed his heart meridian. The antidote, as it turns out, is intimately linked to Su Yu's very lifeline.
The dragon and phoenix were once one, yet fate has kept them worlds apart. It was so twenty years ago, and it is so again twenty years later.
In this life, Su Yu does not seek to defy fate. She will bring this twenty-year game of life and death to an end with her own hands.
