In the autumn of the seventeenth year of Jian’an, Shen Shuyu, the Prime Minister’s second son, is implicated in the Crown Prince’s case. His father sends him to a country estate at the foot of Mount Qingping, ostensibly to recuperate.
Shen Shuyu has a pair of soulful eyes, their corners tilting up slightly, his gaze like spring water on the verge of spilling over. Ever since childhood, he has known how useful his looks can be. He never flaunts them deliberately; a slight lowering of his eyes or a gentle upward glance is enough to make people willingly do his bidding. Everyone in the household and all his colleagues in the capital favor him to some degree.
At the estate on Mount Qingping, he meets a young hunter who keeps his face veiled. Shen Shuyu teaches him to read and gives him a courtesy name. Two years later, in autumn, his elder brother brings him back to the capital. In the years that follow, he places third in the palace examinations and enters government service, rising from a seventh-rank compiler to a second-rank minister of the Court of Judicial Review. He remains unruffled by rumors and responds to political rivals with gentle composure. Everyone at court calls him refined and gracious, a man who handles everything with care. Few notice what lies beneath those soulful eyes: the clear-headedness of someone who has manipulated pieces on a board since childhood, and the restraint of a man who has turned his beauty into a blade without ever cutting himself.
All his life, he has known how to make people’s hearts soften: his elder brother’s, the Crown Prince’s, and that of the young general who returned from the northern frontier.
The one thing he never counted on was someone seeing through every one of his tricks and willingly stepping into his trap anyway.
Devoted, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing gong x unhinged, sickly beauty snake shou
