Though born a woman, she enters the imperial examination disguised as a poor scholar. The Eastern Palace uses a crackdown as an excuse to purge its rivals, while Prince Jing, Xiao Heng, closes in step by step with an embroidered handkerchief in his grasp. The examination becomes a life-or-death contest. In her tiny examination cell, she tears up her spare handkerchief and plots a path to supreme power amid the scent of ink. When the supervising examiner spills tea across her paper, will she keep playing dumb, or reveal her astonishing talent on the spot? In this turbulent age of aristocratic clans, can a woman truly take up her brush and decide the fate of the realm?
