Female Lead: Ding Xingya, daughter of an imperial physician. Clear-headed and aloof, she refuses to become the Crown Princess, heads south to study medicine, and saves lives during a plague.
Male Lead: Lu Yanshen, the Crown Prince (later emperor). Long-suffering and obsessive, he pursues her carriage through the rain, then meets her again in Jiangnan three years later.
Ding Xingya, daughter of an imperial physician, rejects the marriage arranged by the Eastern Palace and petitions to leave the capital and study medicine in the south.
On the day she leaves, rain pours down. Crown Prince Lu Yanshen gallops after her through Yongding Gate and blocks her carriage, asking only for a farewell. She smiles beneath her umbrella and says, "Your Highness, may we never meet again."
Three years later, a plague ravages Qingzhou in Jiangnan. Ding Xingya sets up a medicine tent and works day and night. She never expects the young emperor who arrives in person at the epidemic zone to be the very man she left behind in the rain.
He doesn't bring up the past or force her to return to the capital. He simply moves her medicine tent into the prefectural governor's office, then summons her every day for a pulse check on the grounds that he is "feeling unwell."
After checking his pulse, Ding Xingya says expressionlessly, "Your Majesty's qi and blood are robust. You have no ailment."
Lu Yanshen leans back in his chair and replies leisurely, "I have a malady of the heart. Doctor, will you treat me?"
