Fragrance Filling the Courtyard: Shangguan Yan

This is a tale of love so deep it was doomed to end too soon. In the late spring by West Lake, a stray cat raced down the street with a blue carp in its mouth. What seemed like an ordinary encounter brought Shangguan Yan, a general's orphaned daughter, together with Chu Nantian, the young master of Tianfeng Pavilion. One was cool and distant as the moon, the other gentle as jade. They thought theirs was a fated meeting like fireworks, never knowing it was only the gentlest move in fate's game of chess.

From the misty rains of Jiangnan to the sandstorms of the desert, what lay between them was a chain of interlocking schemes, misunderstandings they could not speak of, and a full twenty years of life and death spent worlds apart. The deepest despair came when, after enduring countless perils to reach him, she witnessed his wedding to another woman with her own eyes. In that moment, her heart turned to ash. She left for the ends of the earth, shouldering everything alone amid the ruins of the wasteland. He, meanwhile, bore the world's misunderstandings and, searching for her, became the peerless hero who, as she once put it, "has a lot to take care of."

This is a story of missed chances and faithful waiting. Can these two people, toyed with by fate for half their lives, still wait for a true reunion in this vast martial world? The lake and mountains where they once walked side by side remember: he lived a life of integrity and quiet simplicity, and she never truly blamed him. Perhaps every parting in this world conceals an unspoken "I understand."

Beyond the Great Wall, south of the desert, stood a Han Chinese city, founded when the young Hongwu rose in rebellion, and enduring for two hundred years.

Through a carefully laid scheme, the female chancellor raised an actor to the throne. She had intended to rule from behind the scenes, but instead raised a true emperor. Women stood among the court officials, and women could serve as ministers.

War swept across the grasslands. The emperor suffered a stroke and lost his speech, while the heirs dwindled away. In a crisis, the emperor's legitimate daughter took command, first governing as regent, then becoming heir to the throne, before accepting the abdication and claiming the empire.

Minnan and the Ming dynasty stood side by side, as close as lips and teeth. They witnessed the golden age of the Central Plains and shared in the tragic songs of the Ming's final years. When the capital fell and the Southern Ming raised its banners, this last army of Han Chinese beyond the frontier marched to the Central Plains, where they too were consumed by the flames of war.

So many people came and went through this story. Meng Lijun was one of them...

And so it became a distant tale of the past...