Spring Behind Vermilion Gates

[The Second Male Lead Takes Center Stage] Her husband was implicated in the Crown Prince's deposition and exiled. Song Cixi begged for help everywhere and spent more than three years fighting for his case, finally clearing his name.

But when he returned to the capital, he had a close companion in hardship by his side.

"Ningbei is bitterly cold. If Jin Niang hadn't risked her life to protect me, I wouldn't have survived."

Jin Niang was afraid of the cold, so her husband made Song Cixi give up her room with the heating brazier. He had no idea that the illness in her legs was caused by kneeling in the snow for two days and two nights to save him.

When Jin Niang had a headache, her husband seized the physician who had been summoned to treat her. He claimed she was faking, and by the time the physician arrived, she had burned up and lost consciousness.

Song Cixi's heart was shattered, and she resolutely asked for a divorce.

But...

Song Cixi could escape the deep courtyards of the Earl's residence, but not the grasp of Xiao Xuan, the man who struck fear into officials and commoners alike.

He had defied all convention, sending his maternal grandfather's family to the executioner's block, driving his mother to hang herself, and causing his father to sever ties with him. He held the power to oversee every official, and anyone who displeased him was dragged to the imperial prison and tortured. The common people hated him to the bone and avoided him at all costs.

And yet this was the man who saved Song Cixi again and again. He dragged her into the abyss, but he also led her out of it.