Cui Yaoning, the beloved ninth miss of the prestigious Cui family of Qinghe, discovers that her husband Pei Yu, the Duke of Zhenguo, has been keeping a pregnant mistress from Yangzhou for three months. Despite his vow never to take a concubine, Pei Yu arranged for the courtesan Ruiniang to stay in a side courtyard, where she bore his child. When Cui Yaoning confronts him, Pei Yu claims he was drugged by the county magistrate and mistook Ruiniang for Yaoning. Before she can demand a divorce, Pei Yu reveals that the Crown Prince, Yaoning's brother-in-law, has been executed for practicing witchcraft to seize the throne, and the entire Cui family has been implicated and annihilated. The women have been reduced to prostitutes, and the men exiled. Devastated by the news and her husband's betrayal, Cui Yaoning collapses and dies.
Yaoning awakens to find herself back in her childhood home, fifteen years old, two months before her coming-of-age ceremony. Her grandmother has just returned from a Buddhist pilgrimage, and the entire household is gathered. Yaoning realizes she has been reborn and vows to prevent the tragedy that befell her family. She coldly rejects Pei Yu, who had been her childhood sweetheart and the father of her future suffering. When her seventh sister Cui Xuan accuses Yaoning of having feelings for Pei Yu, Yaoning publicly denies it, stating she only sees him as a playmate. Her sixth sister Cui Xiuxiu, who had secretly orchestrated Yaoning's attraction to Pei Yu to keep her from marrying someone of higher status, is exposed and reprimanded by the old madam.
Yaoning confides in her mother, Madam Wang, revealing a dream in which the Cui family was executed and Pei Yu became arrogant and cruel after their downfall. Her mother, disgusted by Pei Yu's imagined behavior, agrees to help Yaoning find a more suitable husband from a prestigious family. Yaoning tells her grandmother that she prefers a spirited young general over a talented scholar, deliberately choosing the opposite of Pei Yu's scholarly nature. As she navigates her second life, Yaoning remains determined to uncover who framed the Crown Prince and protect her family from the fate that destroyed them in her previous existence. She refuses to be manipulated by Cui Xiuxiu's schemes and rejects Pei Yu's attempts to reconnect, knowing his true nature only reveals itself after the Cui family's fall. The story follows Yaoning's efforts to change her destiny, avoid the disastrous marriage that led to her family's destruction, and prevent the political conspiracy that resulted in the execution of the Crown Prince and the annihilation of the Cui clan.
