After being tortured to death in the Marquis Manor, Xu Wanning is reborn six years earlier, vowing to retrieve her dowry, protect her maid Xiangyun and find her biological son, while noticing Pei Heng, who investigates Red Dove Incense under a disguise, holds a special interest in her.

Xu Wanning schemes to make Cui Qingping contract the corpse flower plague, forces Bai Qingqing to become the Marquis’s adopted sister and swear an oath at the temple, catches Cui Yunfeng and Bai Qingqing’s adultery in the Buddha hall, and slaps Pei Heng for humiliating her in a verbal fight.

Xu Wanning makes Bai Qingqing take care of the sick Cui Qingping, causing Bai Qingqing to catch the disfiguring plague; Bai Qingqing spends a fortune to hire a Taoist priest to frame Xu Wanning as an inauspicious evil spirit and prepares to whip her in public.

Xu Wanning has bribed the Taoist to reverse the punishment and whip Bai Qingqing instead; Pei Heng enters the manor as a divine healer to disrupt her plan, tests her with Red Dove Incense, sees through her schemes in secret and grows curious about her.

Suspecting an affair between Xu Wanning and Pei Heng, Cui Yunfeng searches her courtyard; Pei Heng secretly shelters Xu Wanning and brings the midwife who delivered her son, helping her prove via a blood test that Cui Qingping is not her biological child.

The old lady fabricates a lie that Xu Wanning gave birth to a stillborn baby to cover up the child swap; Xu Wanning flees to the bell tower and threatens to expose the manor’s scandals to force the old lady to reveal her son’s whereabouts, yet finds no trace of him at the slave arena with Cui Yunfeng.

Xu Wanning collapses in grief thinking her son died in a pile of corpses, but Pei Heng has saved the living boy Changan beforehand and helps her win a gamble to reclaim him; they form an alliance to hunt for Red Dove Incense, while Cui Yunfeng becomes a disabled slave for life.

The old lady and Cui Yunfeng plot to send her lover to defile Xu Wanning and frame her for adultery, yet Xu Wanning turns their trick against them and exposes the old lady’s tryst with her lover in the ancestral hall; the old lady kills a servant to cover up the crime and blames Xu Wanning for the murder.