[Emotional mind games + prominent families + a touch of forbidden romance + winning hearts and minds + both leads are romantically inexperienced]
[Clear-headed, calculating beauty X gentle, sinister emperor]
Xue Yunshu, eldest legitimate daughter of the Grand Tutor’s household, entered the palace and died in childbirth three years later.
Everyone said she was fated to die young, that her baby was too large and the delivery took both their lives. But Xue Yunheng remembered clearly: her elder sister had been strong and healthy since childhood, riding through snow in winter and dancing with her sword in the spring breeze. Besides, while pregnant, her sister had written her several letters saying the imperial child was well-behaved and she had never suffered from morning sickness. How could someone like that have died because her baby was too large? She refused to believe it.
No matter how many times Grand Tutor Xue Huaijin investigated, he always reached the same conclusion. Unwilling to lose a second daughter, he confined her to the inner chambers and forbade her from setting foot in the palace. But Xue Yunheng had never been one to obey. She would enter the palace. She would uncover the truth. And whoever had killed her sister would pay in blood.
The opportunity came at just the right moment. The emperor went out in plain clothes and visited the Grand Tutor’s residence. That day, Xue Yunheng “happened” to stumble into his presence, her eyes slightly red, timid as a startled deer, her slender waist swaying like willow branches in the wind. After returning to the palace, the emperor tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Nothing he saw could compare to that fleeting glimpse of her.
In the end, he brought her into the palace.
Everyone thought she was another pawn offered up by the Grand Tutor’s household, using her beauty to serve the emperor and his favor to secure the family’s power. But Xue Yunheng alone knew that she wanted no favor. She wanted power. She would rise to the highest position and make the murderer lurking in the palace’s shadows watch as she took control of the realm,
then she would cut off that person’s head with her own hands and make them pay in blood.
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