She handed him a knife and asked him to cut through her chains with his own hands.
He had no idea that this was a move in her game all along.
Liu Yushu had two secrets.
First, she was the last survivor of the former dynasty, infiltrating her enemies' ranks with the vow of bringing down the empire.
Second, she had fallen in love with the man she was supposed to use: Gu Chengyue, a "false" young master who had clawed his way out of the mud.
She allied with Jin Lizhen, the empire's favored consort, staging the most dangerous drama beside the throne. They presented their grand plan to restore the former dynasty to the public as a harmless fairy tale. Everyone laughed at their delusions, but under the sunlight, the two women quietly laid a deadly trap.
But when the game reached its end, they discovered that they were not the players, but...
ornate, tragic pieces on fate's chessboard.
She thought she was playing the world, never realizing that the world had already written her prophecy.
Liu Yushu x Gu Chengyue: Redemption and healing, soulmates harboring a shocking secret.
Liu Yushu x Jin Lizhen: Deadly confidantes, dangerous allies conspiring to create a new world.
Chen Jing'an x Gu Chengyue: Excruciatingly angsty love, a dark bond of destructive possessiveness and unyielding resistance.
Theme: The central struggle shared by all the main characters: Gu Chengyue (Li Muliang) struggles between his status as a slave and a young master, and between his true self and his false mask. Liu Yushu (Jiang Yu) seeks her true self beneath her many masks as a fallen princess, merchant, wife, and strategist. Gu Yunzhi's identity is torn apart most profoundly, symbolizing the tragedy of someone pulled apart by family, politics, and hatred all at once. Through their stories, we ask: when every name and identity bestowed by society has been stripped away, who am I?
