In the spring of the nineteenth year of Qing'an, Yuan Jin encountered an injured man on her way to her maternal grandfather's home. He begged her to save him. Softhearted, Yuan Jin rescued him and disguised him as a guard, keeping him by her side until his injuries healed.
Later, her maternal grandfather's family was implicated in a corruption case. Fearing that they would be dragged into it, her parents sent Yuan Jin and her younger brother to Luoyang, to take refuge with a distant cousin.
In Luoyang, Yuan Jin ran into the man again. He told her he was Xu Qinghe, a Judicial Court official.
Relying on the fact that she had once saved his life, Yuan Jin begged him to review her grandfather's case. She never imagined that the very man she had appealed to was the one who had personally sent her grandfather's entire family to prison.
On the day her grandfather was exiled, Yuan Jin saw Xu Qinghe, the man she had trusted, beside the princess's carriage. It turned out he was not Xu Qinghe at all. He was the princess's consort, Pei Ning, heir to the Duke of Zhenguo.
Pei Ning had manipulated Yuan Jin from beginning to end. She fled the capital overnight, but was intercepted at Mengjin Ferry.
He deceived and imprisoned her, humiliated her, and threatened her with her relatives' lives, yet kept insisting that he loved her.
As they lay close together, Pei Ning made a heartfelt promise: "Yuan Jin, apart from marrying you, this heir can give you anything. Please stop thinking about running away, all right?"
Yuan Jin smiled at his words, but her eyes grew even colder. Still, she answered obediently, "All right."
Later, Yuan Jin finally earned Pei Ning's trust. She settled her young brother somewhere safe, then fled south alone. By a twist of fate, she married the real Xu Qinghe, and her hatred gradually began to fade.
She thought that from then on, life would finally go smoothly, and that she and Xu Qinghe could live peacefully in Lingnan. But then Xu Qinghe received an imperial order summoning him back to Luoyang.
She saw Pei Ning again at her mother-in-law's birthday banquet. Ignoring the eyes of everyone present, he gripped her hand and demanded, "Yuan Jin, you have such a cruel heart! If you ran away, how dare you come back?"
Yuan Jin broke free and greeted him distantly. "Young Lord Pei, please show some restraint. I am Shen Yun, wife of the Junior Judicial Court Minister. I don't know any Yuan Jin. You must have mistaken me for someone else."
At first, Pei Ning had treated Yuan Jin as a plaything to amuse himself. Later, he truly grew to care for her, and was willing to flout propriety and use any means necessary to keep her by his side.
Only after he had removed every obstacle, believing he could be with Yuan Jin forever, did he realize that the wrongs he had done could never be forgiven, and that he could never make amends for them in his lifetime.
If he had another chance, he would never make the same mistakes again.
Bad ending. Lovers who hurt each other.
Theme: In the end, love and hate both come to nothing. Better cherish the person before you.
