In March of the seventeenth year of Yongchang, Shen Zhiwei woke up in the fragrance of magnolia flowers and found that he had returned to three years ago - three months before his father Shen Yan was convicted and beheaded. She remembered everything in her previous life: her father was imprisoned, her mother was killed in front of the priest's door, she had been knocking wooden fish in the nunnery for two years, and the fire that burned her to ashes. The only thing she couldn't remember was who was the person who held her hand and said "I'm sorry" in the fire scene.
Xie Wujiu was also reborn, three months earlier than her. He had seen her quiet side face while washing clothes outside the nunnery. He had redeemed her from the monastery but never asked a word. He had listened to the sound of wooden fish outside the nunnery wall for two years. He had also held her hand in that fire and said "I'm sorry" for the first time.
When Shen Zhiwei discovered that the last page of "The Record of Embers" was actually her own handwriting, when the jade pendant with the word "Jiu" engraved on Xie Wujiu's waist overlapped with the memory of the fire scene, and when her mother's death report appeared three days before her rebirth - she finally understood that everyone was trapped in a chess game that had been played for twenty years.
