Everyone in Beiping knew that Li Rongqin, the last princess, was so poor she had nothing left but an old set of palace clothes.
Her enemies were waiting to trample her and rise to power, while the new era scorned her as a “feudal relic.”
The people of Beiping laughed at her stubbornness and pitied her,
waiting to see when this untimely “golden branch of the former dynasty” would fall into the mud and shatter.
Until the day Fu Wenzheng, the ruthless ruler of the north, gave her his only seal of authority.
Only then did people realize that the unremarkable Pavilion of Lingering Grace had long since become a silent battlefield for the most powerful figures of a chaotic age.
From then on, five men who held the reins of power in the turbulent world entered this island of time, one after another
The iron-fisted warlord had once been the lowest stable hand in her household. Now he gripped her waist, eyes bloodshot, begging her to call him “Princess.”
The head of the merchants' guild offered half his fortune, asking only to make her smile.
A foreign collector saw her as the East's most perfect “living antique,” longing to keep her in his collection.
The leader of the new movement denounced her as a feudal ghost, yet his soul burned fiercely for her.
The king of the underworld offered her a knife handle, inviting her to join him in the most dangerous game of all.
The whole city called her a menace, a poison wrapped in old silk.
She merely sat before the mirror, tracing her brows, her smile at once cool and frosty.
Until the day she cut that palace gown, a symbol of her past, to shreds in front of everyone.
Firelight illuminated her stunning face, and the five men finally realized:
Her hook had never been baited.
She simply stood there, dressed in old clothes and radiating splendor.
And those self-proclaimed rulers of a chaotic world had long since willingly bitten down on her sharp, empty hook.
An empty hook needs no bait; amid the rise and fall of a troubled age, a golden branch shines on its own.
