She is a king hidden in the shadows; he is a pawn trapped in plain sight.
Three years ago, all three hundred members of the Shen family in Lingnan were killed overnight. Shen Yuan hid in a dry well and watched the man with half a red lotus on his face draw his blade beneath the black wolf banner.
Three years later, she became the least noticeable concubine-born daughter in the marquis’s household, and the secret master behind Xuan Ying Manor, the foremost intelligence organization in the martial world.
When her legitimate elder sister fled from her wedding, Shen Yuan was forced into the bridal sedan and sent to marry the rumored bloodthirsty, brutal God of War, Prince Xiao Yan.
The whole world laughed at her for walking straight into a tiger’s den. Only she knew that she had engineered this marriage herself. The face beneath the disfiguring mask belonged to the very enemy she had pursued for three years.
She had calculated everything, except that Xiao Yan would see through her identity on their wedding night.
He neither exposed her nor killed her. He simply slid a confidential dossier across the table.
“The real culprit behind the Lingnan case is a third-party faction. You’ll regret killing me.”
“Your Highness, shall we join forces?”
From then on, the prince’s manor became a battlefield without smoke. She pretended to be frail while he played the brute. She turned the world upside down from the shadows with Xuan Ying Manor, while he wielded the power of Night Owl Pavilion in the open.
They tested one another and stayed on guard, yet time and again they took a fatal blow meant for the other amid flashing blades.
When she finally reached the very pinnacle of power and the entire court knelt to cry, “Long live Your Majesty!”
She saw the man she had once hated to the bone kneel on one knee outside the hall, remove his sword, and offer her his military seal.
“This world should be yours. All I want is to stand behind you.”
