Ye Ling Shuang and Qi Hai Rui are close friends who grew up together in the grasslands of Ye Bei. Although Ye Ling Shuang was regarded as an outsider of the grasslands and hated by her fellow tribe mates, the seventh princess of Ye Bei, Qi Hai Rui never looked down on her and treated her as her close friend. Ye Ling Shuang decides to pledge her loyalty to the princess for life.
In order to attack and conquer Ye Bei, Emperor Gao of Chao Kingdom designed a plot where he requested for Qi Hai Rui's hand in marriage. He was sure that Qi Hai Rui would reject the marriage proposal, and he would thus use this as an excuse to incite war. In order to save her kingdom and people, Qi Hai Rui decides to commit suicide by jumping down a cliff. Seeing her close friend die and the Ye Bei Kingdom fall apart, Ye Ling Shuang vows to seek revenge and takes on a new identity as Bai Lu to sneak into the palace in an attempt to assassinate Emperor Gao.
A story that follows Zhu Yuan Zhang's fourth son, Zhu Di, who fought many battles from a young age that aided him in his journey to become a qualified military commander and a skilled politician.
In his youth, Zhu Di followed general Xu Da into war and experienced bloodbaths on the battlefield. As he grew in experience to command troops of his own, he gets caught in the struggle for power within the royal courts that honed his skills in becoming a political strategist. With the support of his followers, Zhu Di settles in Beiping and vows to protect the Ming Dynasty from invaders.
With the death of Emperor Taizu of Ming, Zhu Yun Wen who succeeds in the throne falls for the instigations of his mother's tribe to turn his wrath towards the members of the Zhu imperial family, ultimately forcing Zhu Di's hand to rise up in rebellion.
Li Chang Ge's family was murdered by Li Shi Min, the Emperor of Tang, during the Xuanwu Gate Incident. She heads to Shuo Province under the guise of a man with hopes of raising an army to kill Li Shi Min to avenge her family's death. However, as a captain of the army of Shuo Province in Zhangzhou, she loses a siege by the Eastern Turkic Khaganate General Ashina Sun, who takes her to serve him as a personal military strategist.
Adapted from the manhua by Xia Da (夏达).
Sui Tang Yanyi begins in the 580s with the conquest of the Chen dynasty (557-589) by the Sui dynasty under Emperor Wen, and concludes with the return of the Tang dynasty's Emperor Xuanzong to the capital Chang'an in 758 near the end of the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763).
The plot is made up of three main story lines.
The first, with Emperor Yang of Sui and his concubine Zhu Gui'er (朱貴兒) as the central characters, covers the events in the political arena and inner palace in the final years of the Sui dynasty.
The second story line narrates a turbulent period known as the transition from Sui to Tang, when heroes such as Qin Shubao,Shan Xiongxin (單雄信), Cheng Yaojin (程咬金) and Xu Maogong rise up to overthrow the Sui dynasty, followed by stories of how Li Shimin (the future Emperor Taizong of Tang) defeated his rivals and eventually solidified the Tang dynasty's sovereignty over China.
The last story line tells of the romance between Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Consort Yang, and the events of the An Lushan Rebellion.