Lin Shuyue, a history PhD student, transmigrates and becomes the least-favored empress of the Great Xuan Dynasty.
The imperial palace is an abyss. She nervously learns the rules and keeps her talents hidden, locking the secret of her “other world” inside a hidden compartment in her dressing table.
What she doesn’t know is that the lofty Emperor Cheng'an, Xie Changyuan, saw through the soul inhabiting her body the day she recited, “May we meet year after year.”
He watches her tread carefully with a cool gaze, lets her use “I hit my head” as an excuse, and even speaks up for her for the first time when the empress dowager makes things difficult.
She thinks this is the beginning of a deep bond between emperor and empress.
But every night, after finishing his memorials, he sits alone until dawn, gazing at her portrait, afraid that if he closes his eyes, the girl from a thousand years in the future will vanish like a dream...
The court plots to force his hand. The ministers invoke the “future of the dynasty” to pressure him into taking more consorts.
To protect her, he deliberately pretends to give in, making her lose hope and tie on the red cord that will send her back a thousand years.
When she opens her eyes again, she is in a modern library.
She opens a yellowed history book and reads:
[In the 18th year of Cheng'an, the empress’s palace suddenly fell vacant. The emperor grieved beyond all propriety, his hair turned white, and he suspended court for seven days.]
[In the 23rd year of Cheng'an, the emperor lived alone in the inner palace, never once visiting the six palaces throughout his life. The history books record only one empress.]
[In the 28th year of Cheng'an, the emperor died at the mouth of the river, a broken sword in his hand and a faded red cord tightly held to his chest. He died without an heir.]
It turns out every step of her departure was a way home that he had paved for her with his own hands.
It turns out he had always known she didn’t belong here.
It turns out those three years of harmony, with each of them keeping secrets, were his way of building her the only cage within these man-eating palace walls, and the only place she could call home.
