After dying suddenly, Shen Tangning, a modern history PhD, wakes up to find she has become a low-ranking consort whom the emperor barely favors.
The good news: her father is the Minister of Revenue, her parents dote on her, and her monthly allowance arrives on schedule.
The better news: the emperor hasn’t summoned her in three months, so life in the Cold Palace is just around the corner.
The best news: once she turns twenty-five, she can leave the palace and retire somewhere scenic, growing vegetables and tending flowers, just as she’s always dreamed.
Perfect.
She quickly lays out her “three principles for lying flat in the harem”: don’t compete for favor, don’t get involved in palace schemes, and don’t get up early. She turns the courtyard she’s been assigned in the Cold Palace into a vegetable garden, growing plants, tending flowers, and making delicious food. Her little life is blissful.
What she doesn’t know is that
Emperor Xiao Yanheng has been reborn. In his previous life, when rebels killed him, the only person by his side was this woman he had neglected in the Cold Palace. She fed him his final bowl of porridge.
Given another life, he works hard to strengthen the state and govern for the people, all to give her a peaceful world.
But he doesn’t dare get close to her, afraid that his attention will make her a target.
So what everyone in the harem sees is this:
The emperor is busy day and night, governing diligently.
Lady Shen grows vegetables and tends flowers, enjoying her quiet days.
The two have nothing to do with each other.
Until one day
“The emperor says he’ll come for dinner tonight.”
“Passing by again? Last time he was ‘passing by’ for tea, and the time before that to look at the flowers. What is it this time?”
“...He said he wants to see whether the cucumbers you planted have sprouted.”
“They were only planted yesterday. How could they have sprouted already?! Is he the emperor or an idiot?!”
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She does everything she can to avoid his attention, while he secretly protects her, careful not to let her know.
