A great joke had spread throughout Shengjing: the famous courtesan renowned across Beiliang was none other than the current emperor’s humble first wife.
On the day I returned to Shengjing, Zhou Yanzhi and the empress sat high above the crowd, ruling as equals and envied by all.
He looked at me with cool indifference. “All those years in Beiliang seem to have worn away your spirit.”
I knelt respectfully and said nothing more. At the empress’s arrangement, I entered the Cold Palace.
By my third year there, I could barely hold on.
He thought I had admitted defeat. He said he hadn’t despised me; he’d simply been unable to swallow his anger.
But when he came, I only wept in a confused state of mind and asked him,
