In his previous life, Shi Chen, son of Jiangnan's richest man, was caught up in the struggle for the throne. His closest friend, Zhao Mingxuan, and his fiancée, Liu Ruyan, betrayed him together. In the end, his entire family was executed, and he was poisoned to death in the imperial prison. When he opened his eyes again, he had been reborn three years earlier, on the eve of his wedding. This time, Shi Chen would no longer be a naive merchant who trusted too easily. He would become the mastermind behind his revenge.
He accurately foresaw the coming wedding-sedan mix-up and turned it to his advantage, secretly arranging for Lin Wanqing, daughter of the Minister of Personnel and originally destined to marry an idle prince, to be mistakenly wed into the perilous Eastern Palace. Shi Chen approached the future Crown Princess, who would otherwise die a miserable death in the Cold Palace, and forged an alliance with her based on mutual benefit. Facing a Crown Prince who seemed virtuous but was cruel at heart, Liu Ruyan, a political enemy's spy disguised as a confidante, and Zhao Mingxuan, the hypocritical Vice Minister of Revenue, Shi Chen used his memories of his previous life to carefully plot each move as the two-year countdown to his family's execution ticked away.
With his foreknowledge of the future court and coming disasters, he used his position as a merchant to control the empire's economic lifelines and enlisted capable ministers and generals oppressed by the Crown Prince, navigating between rival factions. In the end, Shi Chen helped Lin Wanqing transform from a pawn in the Eastern Palace into an iron-fisted empress ruling from behind the curtain. He himself remained behind the scenes, controlling the empire's true wealth and its shadowy forces, making all his enemies pay dearly, completely turning the tide and becoming an emperor in all but name.
