Lin Yuezai has lost her memory.
When she wakes, a young, handsome emperor is sitting beside her bed. “A Yue, you are the person I love most.”
So she believes him.
She waits for Lin Jingxing to return from court, throws herself into his arms, and loops her arm through his at the lantern festival, smiling as she calls him her husband.
Lin Jingxing knows it all began with a lie, but he still loses himself in it.
The identity he stole has brought him genuine affection.
It's poison to quench his thirst, yet he gladly drinks it.
Until the great victory on the northern frontier.
Prince Ding, Lin Jingyuan, marches south with forty thousand black-armored soldiers and reaches the banks of the Luo River.
The capital's troops form ranks across the river. The entire court assumes the regent has brought his army to force a coup and purge the emperor's enemies.
Lin Yuezai thinks so too.
Until the man looks at her from beyond ranks of armored soldiers, his eyes red, and calls out:
“A Yue.”
She begins dreaming of another version of herself.
She dreams of a bloodstained street on the Qixi Festival, a kiss beneath the flowering trees during the autumn hunt, and a journey of a thousand miles to the southern frontier for a man named Lin Jingyuan.
At last, she remembers:
Before she fell in love with Lin Jingxing, she had already been deeply in love with Lin Jingyuan.
But recovering her memories doesn't take everything back to the beginning.
The love she once felt was real.
The love she felt after losing her memory was real, too.
She flees from both men and takes refuge at the Gu residence, hoping to sort through this hopeless sea of love and hatred.
But then she discovers that Gu Chongyue, the ever-gentle, composed Chancellor who treats the world like a chessboard, was the one who offered the love potion back then.
He is also the third man she can no longer treat as an outsider.
Lin Yuezai loses one set of memories and gains a lover.
Theme: Even after loss and forgetfulness, it takes courage to rediscover yourself and your true feelings.
