1927, Nanjing.
Shen Yingqiu, the third daughter of the declining scholarly Shen family, is forced to marry Gu Changqing, a cotton gauze merchant she has never met, when her father is seriously ill and the family is on the verge of bankruptcy.
The Gu family is the new rich in Nanjing, and is incompatible with the old-fashioned respectability of the Shen family.
But she discovered that Gu Changqing was not the playboy in legend - he was taciturn and harbored secrets. He was a shrewd businessman during the day, but at night he secretly funded the orphans of the Northern Expedition soldiers.
He is not the biological son of the Gu family. His life experience is the deepest secret of the entire Gu family.
The two got close to each other in temptation, and in the process they discovered that each other was a "relic" of the old era.
At the same time, Yingqiu began to trace the truth behind her mother's suicide.
In 1937, Nanjing fell. Gu Changqing disappeared in the war.
