At her grandmother's dying command, Liu Qingci came to the capital with half a jade pendant, seeking the second son of the Gu family, to whom she had been promised in marriage years ago.
But as soon as she arrived, she heard that her fiancé, Gu Huaijin, already had someone he loved and intended to break off their engagement and marry another woman. Liu Qingci neither cried nor made a fuss. She decided on the spot to end the engagement and return to her hometown, but a gentle, distinguished young gentleman stopped her.
He helped her out of a predicament, accompanied her as she audited the accounts, helped her establish herself in the Gu family, and repeatedly stepped in to protect her whenever she was slighted.
Liu Qingci thought he was her fiancé, who had suddenly come to his senses.
It wasn't until her wedding day, when the real Gu Huaijin barged into the bridal hall with the woman he loved and the guests erupted in shock, that she learned the man who had accompanied her through the wedding ceremony was not Gu Huaijin at all, but Gu Yanzhou, the Gu family's untouchable youngest uncle, a man with immense power at court.
Furious, she left and refused to forgive him for hiding the truth.
But when her grandmother's old letters came to light and her parents' old case resurfaced, Liu Qingci discovered that the person she had truly been betrothed to all those years ago was Gu Yanzhou. The supposed mix-up was nothing but a scheme: the Gu family had switched the marriage documents to curry favor with the powerful.
Gu Yanzhou had waited for her for years, but entangled in the old case, he hadn't dared to reveal himself recklessly.
One wanted the truth; the other wanted to keep her safe.
From the broken engagement scandal to the overturning of the case at the ancestral shrine, from the opening of an apothecary to the old case at court, Liu Qingci gradually tore away the Gu family's hypocrisy and finally saw the man who had silently stood behind her all along.
This time, she wouldn't be pushed into marriage by her grandmother's dying wish.
She would make her own choice.
She would choose an honorable name, the truth, and the man who had waited for her for so long.
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