The bitter winds and snow of the Cold Palace buried every trace of Shen Zhiheng’s sincerity and tenderness from her previous life.
Born the legitimate daughter of the Grand Tutor, she was blessed with every imaginable honor. Yet one moment of misplaced kindness cost her both family and love. Her closest relatives schemed against her, her beloved abandoned her, and she died consumed by hatred in a freezing prison.
By heaven’s grace, she returned to the age of fifteen, before any of those tragedies had become inevitable.
Only after dying once did she understand how treacherous people could be. Having endured a living hell, she would never again waste her tenderness.
Shen Zhiheng hid her sharp edges behind a gentle facade, navigating the powerful families’ inner courts and the schemes of the imperial palace.
Against her scheming half-sister, she planned every move and stripped away all her support. With her biased relatives, she drew clear lines and stopped groveling to please them. And when faced with the cold-hearted Crown Prince, she walked away and severed the doomed bond of her past life.
Beneath the calm surface of the inner quarters, currents ran deep; across the imperial capital, the winds of change were rising.
Old debts remained unpaid, and hatred would not fade. Watch as this bloodied legitimate daughter stirs the storm from within her secluded quarters, settles the scores of her past, and rises to the very summit of power.
