I started reading around last year and finally finished the volume. The story lead up from Cheng Shao Sheng's sudden engagement to Ling Bu Yi to the end after the Empress birthday events. Probably the most favourite part of the story since CSS started her life at the palace. Getting to know LBY's royal adoptive family as her own in-laws and along the way, she started to become someone who was appreciated for the person she is unlike previously when she had to tone herself down and tried to marry someone safe just to escape her toxic family.
Like the previous volumes, the themes of dysfunctional Asian family still recur in the royal families. Despite the Emperor and The Empress being likable adoptive parents to CSS, they're quite terrible parents to their own adult children who was in variable ways, the product of their own families and upbringing. But in a way, the arc made LBY more humanized to CSS who began to see him less idealized and more like her; stubborn, irritable and flawed. Much like the adaptation I had a harder time not to find the Emperor's tormenting CSS as endearing; he was very invested in his Eleventh's future happiness and manipulated his way to make CSS's feelings for LBY known even when scolded by his consorts.
Unlike the show however, it was harder to see the background manipulation and politics as it was filtered through CSS's POV and barely a hint of what LBY was up to. She can be quite oblivious to the power players and untouchable people shuffling around and being made indisposed. But this underlying story within the story was why I like this more than The Story of Ming Lan.