In the Pear Garden

[This novel will definitely be completed. If you want to skip straight to the palace intrigue, start with Volume Three.]

One act ends and another begins; ask yourself, is a foreign land truly home?

On a winter night in the ninth year of Kangxi’s reign, red snow fell over the Li residence in Liaodong. Ten-year-old Li Anyu, known as Yuan-jie, curled up inside a blue-and-white porcelain vat, listening as swords raised by those who sought to overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming shattered the plum blossoms overhead. The sedative her stepmother forced down her throat blurred her birth mother’s screams, yet the bloodstained box was branded into her bones forever. Hidden inside was a secret map of the dragon vein, personally bestowed by Nurhaci…

Four years later, begonias bloomed in all their glory in the Forbidden City. Yuan-jie found half a talisman in the blood-soaked birthing bed of the empress. The Manchu script on it was stained with the pungent scent of zedoary, pointing to a shocking secret jointly guarded by the Hesheri family and the Mingzhu household: the massacre of the entire Li family years ago had been carried out with Kangxi’s tacit approval.

For twenty years in the imperial harem, she made her way over the scorched earth of the pear garden.

Her mother’s jadeite prayer beads concealed a coastal defense map; the Grand Empress Dowager’s bodhi beads hid a treaty with the northern tribes. And the fire that destroyed the Li residence had been destined to consume the ninefold palace walls from the moment she took up the box.

When cannon fire across the strait cast a red glow over the peak of Changbai Mountain, Anyu finally understood the blood-soaked words in her grandfather Li Yongfang’s surrender letter:

**“Pear blossoms bloom over a tomb of loyal souls; the remnant snow remains to shine upon the dragon’s scales.”**

The wind in the Forbidden City would, in the end, blow back to the pear garden. Only this time, the player’s fingers hovered beside Kangxi’s pillow

[Written while researching historical records, with an effort to stay true to history.]

[A few details are fictionalized, but they won’t affect the reading experience.]

[Corrections and suggestions are welcome. I’m learning and improving as I go.]