On the auspicious hour of her wedding, Shen Qingyuan, dressed in red bridal robes, climbs the highest Stairway of Prayer in the imperial palace.
The Crown Prince tells her to leap with her arms spread wide, praying for the emperor and empress to remain devoted to each other so that she and her husband may be bound together forever.
Full of hope, she jumps. But it is not her husband's hands that catch her, only the dreadful blood grooves carved into the stone wall.
As she dies, she hears the Crown Prince and her half-sister sneer: "Her life is just what we need to secure my throne."
When she opens her eyes again, she has become a red-clad vengeful ghost, bound by a marriage contract and trapped on the stairway. She has also been declared to have died by accident while attempting suicide for love.
Her new husband and half-sister climb the stairs that very night, pretending to pay their respects. Using the ghostly marriage contract to command the crows, she exposes the false testimony in front of everyone and officially opens an investigation into her death.
From then on, wedding music rings out at midnight in the Eastern Palace, claiming lives as the blood debts of the entire court are brought to light one by one.
She neither weeps nor begs, and relies on no charity born of remorse. With her "Red Bridal Debt Contract," she exposes blood debts, presents irrefutable evidence, and exacts repayment in life.
She dismantles the hidden formation beneath the ceremonial platform, uncovers the black-market accounts behind the swapped dowry, reveals the bride-sacrifice tragedy from seventeen years ago, and shatters the hoax of divine punishment for the spring floods.
She joins forces with Prince Jing, Xiao Zhiheng, a man whose power commands the court. He safeguards the legal proceedings in the living world, while she lays out the evidence from the underworld.
The hypocritical heir to the throne bows his head and confesses in public, her wicked relatives are punished according to the law, and the royal formation that fed on human lives is completely dismantled.
She refuses to kneel or bow even in death. In the end, the powerful nobles of the entire court kneel before her, seeking to atone for every last blood debt.
I Married a Convict During the Famine, and Now My Granaries Overflow at the Border
Don't Pity Her Just Because She's a Delicate Flower
The Real Heiress Is Disdained? The Cats and Dogs She Raised Reincarnate as Nobles and Call Her Mother!
I'm Only Three, Yet I Make Those Scoundrels Eat Their Own Pants