The whole city laughed at my grandmother for being illiterate, knowing nothing about managing a household, and being a good-for-nothing who only fed cats and basked in the sun. At first, I thought so too. Until I entered the Eastern Palace as the Crown Princess, and concubine Lin Wan set up ledger traps, banquet seat schemes, and interlocking plots, pressing me into a corner with wave after wave of overt and covert attacks. Only then did I abruptly realize that the old matriarch who had played the fool for forty years could read military reports, held secret ledgers in her hands, and saw through the human heart. Back then, when she sought justice for her husband, she accepted the trust to guard those secret ledgers and an imperial decree. For half her life, she played the fool and acted clumsy to protect her late husband's clean reputation and shield me from covert arrows. Hidden beneath her foolishness was a lifetime's worth of doting love. This life, it is my turn to wear the phoenix crown and be her backing.