When Jiang Yirou was fourteen, she fell onto the flagstones over a candied hawthorn skewer. The young general Li Sheng helped her up, and a plain handkerchief embroidered with the character “Sheng” sealed her heart to him for half her life.
To fulfill the final wish of the tutor who had raised her, she used his kindness as leverage and begged to marry him. All she got was a cold wedding through a side gate and endless loneliness in a secluded courtyard of the general’s residence. His heart belonged to someone else. He saw her as a burden who had forced her way into his life and shut her out from every trace of warmth.
When war erupted on the frontier, the tutor died saving Li Sheng. The marriage she had won by threatening to take her own life became a cruel joke. He celebrated his grand wedding to the woman he loved, while she sat alone in the cold courtyard. He rode off to the battlefield with his beloved in his thoughts, while she was forgotten, imprisoned within the walls of a deep estate.
Yelv Feng, commander of the Northern Di forces, appeared out of nowhere. He lured her with maps and ensnared her with tenderness, seeing her as the prize he had pursued for years. The fall of her country and the news that her entire family had been executed reached her. To save Li Sheng’s life, she stole the map and fled, bearing the infamy of a traitor for all time. In return, all she received was his order to hunt her down: “Alive or dead, bring her to me.”
Adorned in bridal red, she entered the enemy camp. She became the traitor he hated most, and the consort Yelv Feng was determined to claim. On a high terrace, she killed Yelv Feng with her own hands, ending the scheming and plunder. Then she turned to face Li Sheng, who had returned drenched in blood, and saw only desolation.
From the sweetness of candied hawthorn, to the warmth of a handkerchief, to the sorrow of bloodshed, she spent her whole life chasing an impossible love. When love and hate were finally over and the wind and snow had passed, the old handkerchief was stained with blood. Only then did she understand that all her longing had been nothing but an empty dream.
