During the Dayin Dynasty, the deposed crown prince was framed for treason by Grand Secretary Lu Mingyuan, resulting in the annihilation of his entire family. His orphan, Li Ye, changed his name and lived in hiding, becoming a compiler in the Hanlin Academy. When he submitted memorials criticizing current ills, he faced suppression and was demoted to the cold palace to compile history, where he fortuitously discovered his true identity. Joining forces with the female physician Su Wan and the elderly eunuch Zhou Dehai, Li Ye gathered tampered old archives, physical evidence, and witnesses to break through the heavy persecutions of the powerful official. After surviving imprisonment and confronting him before the emperor at last, he overthrew the treacherous official and cleared his father's generation of a decade-long injustice. Having achieved success, he rejected the position of crown prince, content to remain a solitary minister, guarding the world's innocence with his historical brush.