Black-Clothed Alley

Synopsis

The old palace halls, the ancient songs, once again tell of the land's affairs in the present day.

At the Vermilion Bird Bridge and in the Black-Clad Alley, how many years of the Wang and Xie families have played out?

In the sixth year of Zhangwu under the Great Jin, the Yang clan of Hongnong raised an army. By the eighth year, Gaozu had founded the Great Yi, changed the reign title to Baoxiang, and supplanted the Sima clan. Maps were redrawn and emperors came and went, yet one thing remained unchanged: the Xie and Wang clans stood foremost among the powerful aristocratic houses, holding sway over the court and overshadowing the emperor.

He was a hidden dragon from humble beginnings, raised among the common people. He enlisted while young, armed with strategic brilliance, pacified the eight directions, executed traitors, defended and expanded the realm, and won one glorious battle after another. First he was appointed General Who Pacifies the North, then elevated to the Grand General of Zichen. In a single day, he soared like a dragon and a phoenix, standing head and shoulders above the powerful clans and unmatched in splendor;

In the twelfth year of Qianming, the Grand General of Zichen, Wen Xuan, received an imperial decree to marry a daughter of the Xie family. The wedding rites were complete. Beneath the bridal veil, however, the face he saw was far more radiant than he had ever imagined;

Xie Ran, Princess of Souyu, was born amid gilded luxury and raised amid the flames of war. At fifteen, she was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Lingnan, and from then on she held sway across the battlefield, directing her troops with unshakable composure. Ten years into the Qianming reign, just as the sons of the capital's aristocratic families thought that this royal daughter, who preferred dancing with blades to dancing at court, could never do anything more outrageous than aid famine victims in an enemy state, she took her younger sister's place on the day of her wedding and married the Grand General of Zichen, who had long been estranged from her father, shocking the whole realm;

A marriage born of fate and tangled in layers of schemes, a feud of desire and vengeance buried for years. After walking a bloodstained road through countless thorns, her only regret was that she had given him too little of her time across their long years together.