During the Jinghe era of the Great Liang dynasty, the Prince of Qi staged a coup, plunging the realm into chaos. Lady Shen, wife of the Shen family, fled south from the capital to escape the turmoil. Along the way, she shared a mountain temple with Zhang Cui Niang, a woman from a farming family in Jiangnan. They gave birth to baby girls one after the other on the same day. When defeated soldiers suddenly stormed in, everyone in the temple fled in panic. Weak from childbirth and dazed, the two mothers accidentally switched their swaddled babies amid the confusion, and their bloodlines were exchanged.
Twelve years later, Shen Qingwan, the daughter of the Liu family raised in the Shen household, had become famous throughout the capital for her talent. Treated as the Shen family's legitimate daughter, she was carefully groomed and engaged at a young age to the heir of the Marquis of Yongning. Meanwhile, the true blood daughter of the Shen family, Liu Mingzhu, grew up in a cloth shop in Qingxi Town, Jiangnan, an carefree merchant's daughter.
It is only when Shen Yanzhi, the eldest son of the Shen family, travels south on official business and happens to glimpse a girl who looks just like his mother when she was young that the truth buried for twelve years begins to emerge.
