Eight hundred years ago, he was the pampered young master of Nanzhao, and the other was a hostage prince from the Central Plains.
The hostage thought he was protecting a delicate flower. He took arrows meant for him, braved snowy mountains, and willingly gave up the throne for his sake.
Until the day rebels surrounded the city, and the young master climbed the tower alone, calmly bringing a rebellion to its knees.
Watching the youth he had protected for six years from below the tower, the hostage suddenly realized: from beginning to end, he was the one who had been manipulated.
Before he could even get angry, the youth rose onto his toes and placed a dagger in his hand. “Either kill me, or become my consort.”
Eighty years later, he was a tea-industry specialist returning from overseas, while the other was the “daughter” of a caravan leader, disguised as a woman.
He tested him with a marriage pact, set him up with his intelligence network, and gambled on an entire Burma Road’s worth of lives to see whether he would take a bullet for him.
In the end, the specialist took a bullet for him and tore up their marriage pact. He said, “Whether you’re a man or a woman, Shen Yan, you’re the only person I’ll ever choose in this life.”
In this life, he was a gentle, soft-spoken guide at the Nanzhao Museum, while the other was an aloof, abstinent CEO with a birthmark on his wrist.
He held out an iron bangle and smiled. “Sir, you wouldn’t happen to be my lover from a past life, would you?”
The CEO opened the family genealogy and pinned him against a display case. “Stop pretending. I saw the words you carved into my iron bangle eight hundred years ago.”
Three lifetimes, one pair of iron bangles. On the surface, he was the one taming the other, but in truth, he had willingly let himself be tamed for eight hundred years.
He thought he was keeping a fish in his pond, only to discover that he was the fish.
“You ask what the antidote is? The love poison I gave you eight hundred years ago has only one cure: me.”
Theme: Love is the most cunning calculation, and the most complete surrender. The deepest love in the world is knowing you’re deceiving me, yet willingly letting you deceive me across three lifetimes.
