On the day the newly appointed top scholar paraded through the streets, Gu Chan’s handkerchief fluttered in the breeze and landed right in Shen Zhijing’s palm.
When they met again beneath a bodhi tree, she realized she had fallen for him. Later, an imperial decree arranged their marriage, and she wed the Left Vice Censor-in-Chief, a man renowned throughout the court and capital: aloof and taciturn, proper and courteous, and always carrying the lingering scent of medicine.
She didn’t know that beneath his official robes lay another body, or what was hidden inside the plum-blossom hairpin he never let anyone see. She didn’t know that he had “died” once when he was seven years old.
All she knew was that she loved him.
Then the Crown Prince was attacked, old cases were reopened, and a bloodstained divorce agreement was delivered into her hands.
Only then did she begin to understand that the man she had shared every day and night with bore far more than one secret.
Youning, I’ve come to take you home.
Theme: Robbed of their lives by fate, some people conceal their talents and preserve their innocence for half a lifetime. At last, with their beloved by their side, they reclaim the act of living for themselves, turning it from a means of revenge into something of their own.
