Counting the Palace Walls

In the eighth month of the fifteenth year of Nanan, Emperor Nanan issued an edict: all daughters aged thirteen to sixteen from the households of officials of third rank or higher in Zidu must enter the palace to take part in the selection. Any family found to have an unmarried daughter in that age range who failed to enter the selection or married her off in secret would have their property confiscated and their entire clan executed. The candidates were to make thorough preparations, and the formal selection was set for the third month of the sixteenth year, when the young women from each household would enter the palace.

With the candidates' arrival at the palace drawing near, the Ming family was in a panic. Ming Meixue, who had already been registered to enter the palace for the selection in the third month, was now pregnant. How could she go to the palace in that condition? Yet failing to arrive on time and secretly marrying her off would bring the whole family the death penalty!

“Could we choose a girl from the clan to enter the palace in Meixue's place?” Dou, the wife of Ming Pengwei, asked as she watched him carefully.

In the end, Dou chose Ming Chuyun, the illegitimate second daughter of Ming Changyu from a collateral branch of the Ming family, to enter the palace in Ming Meixue's place. Chuyun's face looked remarkably like Meixue's, and they were similar in build and age too. She was the perfect choice.

Ming Chuyun had no wish to enter the palace in the young lady's place. But her adoptive mother treated her cruelly, and the Gu family had just called off her engagement. Looking at her four-year-old younger brother, Chuyun agreed to enter the palace for Ming Meixue, on the condition that Dou would let her and her little brother leave the Ming family.

Chuyun planned to find a way to fail the selection. Then she could bring her brother out, and the two of them could live on their own, which would be better than staying under her adoptive mother's thumb.

Yet the one who least wanted to be chosen was the very one named a Noble Lady of the sixth rank in the selection.

From then on, she rose steadily through the ranks of the imperial harem!