Jade Shattered on Kunlun Ridge

A dying person x a dead person

Qi Lingjiang was not yet fifteen, yet already suffered from countless ailments.

After the family weighed their options, she became a disposable pawn, sent to recuperate at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain while she waited to die.

One night, the moon shone dimly, and the thin layer of snow had yet to melt.

A young man emerged from behind a newly blossoming pear tree. His flowing robes and broad sash carried the heavy scent of incense and candles.

He was as strange and gloomy as a ghost, yet his smile was gentle and captivating.

He not only helped her overcome her inner demons, but personally pored over medical texts and went to great lengths to treat her chronic illness, pulling her back from the brink of death time and again.

Qi Lingjiang grew rather fond of him and wanted to marry him.

But when she opened a page of secret history, she caught sight of his name, yellowed with age.

He had died ten years ago.

-

Ten years ago, everyone knew Cui Shaoan.

Brilliant and extraordinarily talented, he had become a chief minister while still young. A single memorial had made him famous in the capital, and he had earned renown throughout the land by campaigning at Langjuxu.

Yet he was a treacherous minister guilty of every crime imaginable.

Using his position as regent, he held the emperor hostage to command the feudal lords and repeatedly rebelled against the throne.

He even killed the emperor, bringing about the fall of the kingdom.

At last, on the day the kingdom fell, Cui Shaoan turned his sword on himself, spilling his blood across Kunlun.

For ten years after his death, Cui Shaoan could find no release.

One day, as the ice melted and the snow receded on Zhongnan Mountain, he happened upon a girl admiring pear blossoms in the middle of the night.

Snow clung to her sleeves, and her smile shone like the moon.

Cui Shaoan treated her illness, taught her the art of statecraft and political maneuvering, and personally saw her home.

He watched her dye her hair green and marry a husband.

But on her wedding day, something unexpected happened.

The young woman cast off her elaborate skirts and ornaments and resolutely put up her hair. She took up her brush, wrote the truth, and knelt outside the Imperial Historiography Office, taking on the burden left by her father and brothers, all of whom had died.

She would revise the history of the kingdom and restore the good name of the dead.

Perhaps she would restore his name, too.

Note: The male lead is alive, not a ghost.

Theme: Better to shatter like jade than remain whole like common stone.