Jade in the Southern Courtyard

Love gave rise to obsession, and obsession gave rise to hatred. He was the supreme ruler, the lofty emperor of the Great Qing, Yongzheng. He won the realm, but could never win her heart. He loved her. Across all the years of his life, he waited and waited, until the peach blossoms no longer danced in the wind and a prosperous age fell into turmoil.

She pored over history books and the accounts penned by scholars. There, she found the story of a man who was both sinister and devoted, and she could never forget him. One winter's Eve, his noble black cloak billowed in the snow. He loved her more than life itself. That man from the book was the lover fate had chosen for her from the very beginning.

In the south, the bamboo courtyard stood empty, its jade forgotten. One dream, one splendid world. One leaf, one bodhi.

He was a great general who had fought across the empire and guarded its borders, the fourteenth son of Kangxi, the Sagely Ancestor of the Qing. The battlefield was his home, and he'd never given a thought to romance. But one year, outside the capital, beneath the willows and peach blossoms, stood a woman he would never forget for the rest of his life.

He won an imperial marriage decree through his military achievements, asking the emperor to give her to him as his Fourteenth Princess Consort. But this enraged the emperor: she was the Ninth Prince's primary wife, his Ninth Imperial Sister-in-Law.

The cycles of fate all sprang from love and hate. She had toyed with their hearts, as if this were the cause from which every consequence had come.