Spring Sorrow Blossoms When the Lotus Leaves Emerge

In the eighteenth year of the Guangxi era of Great Chu, Shen Xi, a commoner girl chosen for the imperial palace, is forced to enter the palace despite the mysteries surrounding her birth. Unwilling to become a consort or concubine, she is framed and, as she supposedly wished, sent first to the Laundry Bureau and then to the Imperial Medical Academy. But an accident makes Shen Xi see things in a new light: in the harem, a consort's status may be a cage, but it can also be a weapon. Seizing her chance to win favor, Shen Xi eventually unravels the mystery of her origins and clears the Gongyi family of its wrongful accusations, only to become entangled in one harem struggle after another...