The Jade Pendant

Wei Liang returns from Qingzhou with findings about Changyu's birth. He carries a jade pendant that was found with baby Changyu when Fan Dagui took her in. The pendant bears the crest of a noble family — one that was wiped out during a purge twenty years ago, a purge ordered by the same Prince Kang now connected to the Jinzhou case. If Changyu is the surviving child of that family, it gives her a legitimate claim that could threaten powerful people.

Changyu examines the pendant with trembling hands. She contacts her father, who finally tells the full truth: he found her as an infant, abandoned at the riverside wrapped in silk, the pendant around her neck. He raised her as his own and never told her because he wanted to protect her from whatever violence caused her abandonment.

Qianqian, seeing the pendant, goes pale. She recognizes it from the novel she read in her time — and she knows that in the original story, the revelation of Changyu's identity leads to catastrophe. But the timeline has already diverged. Qianqian decides she must act to prevent the original tragedy, even if it means revealing her own secret.