Song Jinse was smiling when she died.
She had been the least favored empress of the Great Qi Dynasty, neglected by her husband for ten years, trampled beneath the Noble Consort, and mocked by everyone in the land as “unloved, childless, and without anyone to rely on.” On the day she died, the emperor was celebrating the Noble Consort’s birthday. Fireworks filled the palace, and no one noticed when the lights went out in Fengyi Palace.
When she opened her eyes again, she had not returned to the time before she entered the palace. Instead, she had arrived in another Great Qi Dynasty: the same name, the same imperial family, the same husband, but a completely different history.
In this parallel world, she was no empress, merely the daughter of a minor fifth-rank official, newly selected to enter the palace as an insignificant Talented Lady. Emperor Qi Huan was not the cold tyrant she knew, but a young ruler whose power had been usurped by ministers. His eyes held a weariness and… vulnerability she had never seen before.
The man she had hated for ten years was, in this world, still a boy who needed her help.
Song Jinse did not hesitate. She chose to get close to him. Not for love, but for revenge: she would make him in this world repay, with interest, all the hatred she bore toward the man from the other world.
But she had forgotten that people’s hearts were no chessboard. Once a move was made, there was no taking it back, and sooner or later, everything would fall into chaos.
When memories from the two worlds began to overlap, when she could no longer tell whether the man before her was an enemy or a lover, and when the “Qi Huan” from the other world actually crossed over too…
Only then did she discover that this transmigration had never been an accident.
And his love for her, in both worlds, had been part of a scheme twenty years in the making.
