Overworked office drone Lu Chen transmigrates into the world of Ji Xiaolan as Su Jiangxian, a frail yet astonishingly talented young woman. Delicate as a willow, she stuns everyone with her brilliance and uses her “open schemes” to maneuver between Qianlong, Heshen, and Ji Xiaolan, stirring up the imperial court. She exploits the emperor’s private desires to escape, Ji Xiaolan’s conscience to lay her plans, and Heshen’s greed to break through her predicament. Everyone thinks she is a devastating beauty who brings ruin, but no one knows she is a prisoner using the game as a means of saving herself. When Qianlong finally realizes how carefully she has plotted each step, he flies into a rage and sentences her to death. At the moment of execution, remorse suddenly overwhelms him, and he hastily orders, “Stay the blade!” Ji Xiaolan rushes into the execution ground in a frenzy, clutching the imperial decree, only to receive her still-warm corpse. As it turns out, from the very first day she transmigrated, she had already calculated the date of her own death.
