Gao Wen, the former dynasty's crown prince, lies low in a military camp. Because he looks just like the eldest prince, Li Yipeng, Princess Li Xuewen abducts him to serve as a substitute. Swallowing his bitterness, he puts on a blood-jade ring engraved with the name of his love rival and carefully advances under the princess's protection. But while pursuing revenge, he discovers a protective talisman sewn by her own hand and hidden beside her pillow. When twenty years of restraint culminate in a bloody coup, a secret potion for faking death in a dry well deep in the palace and a strand of hair steeped in poisoned wine reveal a shocking truth. On the night the new emperor ascends the throne, he sits alone on the dragon throne, holding a shattered jade bracelet, and finally realizes that the cruelest scheme of all was the trembling of his own heart when they first met beneath the ginkgo tree.
Theme: Power plays and true feelings: calculating everything under heaven, yet failing to account for the human heart
