(Ensemble cast, two female leads)
She is Princess Mingwei, a noble-born princess who disguises herself, rides through Chang’an, and laughs and jokes with a circle of women from different backgrounds who are united by their loyalty to one another. She is Shen Shiyuan, the daughter of a disgraced official whose name has yet to be cleared. Carrying the blood debt of her entire family, she walks alone through the dark, intent on solving a shocking case.
Two osmanthus cakes and one chance encounter: Shen Shiyuan carefully draws close to Princess Mingwei, hoping only to use the princess’s influence to pry open the door to overturning the verdict. But she never expected to find more along the way than political schemes and calculations. A highborn young woman risks everything to protect her mother; a palace maid grits her teeth and studies to break free of her fate; a commoner woman uses her own hands to give her younger siblings a place to stand. They are women, and they are their own generals.
As the clues to the case increasingly point to the highest reaches of the court, and an imperial edict ordering Princess Mingwei to marry abroad pushes her to the edge of fate, Shen Shiyuan must choose between clearing her family’s name and the one she loves. She makes the emperor five promises, trading her own life for Mingwei’s freedom. Mingwei’s backward glance is the gentlest answer to this act of solitary courage.
With the realm as their scroll and their lives as their brush, they leave their own signature in Chang’an.
