Su Qianqian is the least favored illegitimate daughter in the marquis's household. Her birth mother died young, and her stepmother torments her. When an imperial marriage decree arrives, her elder sister is to marry General Gu Changyuan, a man rumored to kill without blinking and radiate a fearsome aura. Unwilling to let her own daughter walk into a living hell, her stepmother knocks Su Qianqian unconscious and stuffs her into the bridal sedan, making her the substitute bride.
Everyone waits to see her make a fool of herself, sure that she'll either be scared to death on her wedding night or crushed by the general's household rules. But after she splits her forehead, her mother's old hairpin gets stained with blood, and she begins to see the secrets others keep buried in their hearts. A servant stealing silver, a matron falsifying the books, a noblewoman hiding her shame, a powerful official burying a case... From then on, nothing in the capital is a secret to her.
On their wedding night, Gu Changyuan coldly lifts her veil. Su Qianqian is about to pretend to faint to save her own skin when she suddenly sees him as a child, failing to steal a candied hawthorn skewer and then clinging to a pillar, crying uncontrollably. After a moment's silence, she asks, “General... did you like candied hawthorns as a child?” Gu Changyuan's eyes darken. “How do you know that?” Su Qianqian immediately sits up straight. “I also know that Nanny Wang hid the banknotes in the chicken coop last night.”
From then on, she cleans out wicked servants, fights her stepmother, exposes fake innocents, and dismantles conspiracies, making her way in the general's household by trading on the dark secrets of the capital's powerful elite. But when the old hairpin points toward the depths of the imperial palace, she discovers that her mother's death was no accident, and neither was the substitution marriage. And the general everyone fears had been waiting for her since many years ago.
