In the seventeenth year of Yonghe, Shen Zhiyi, the legitimate daughter of the Censorate, was carried into the Prince of Zhenbei’s manor in a bloodstained bridal sedan. Everyone said it was a ghost marriage between a sinister prince and a frail young lady. Little did they know the sedan concealed nuptial wine steeped in safflower, while half a Fenglin jade pendant in the bride’s sleeve answered the ninety-nine white lanterns beneath the manor’s eaves, each calling to the dead.
Xiao Jingheng, the Prince of Zhenbei who could slay gods and Buddhas, lifted the bride’s chin with his embroidered spring saber on their wedding night. “Princess Consort, do you know what happened to the last person who poisoned my nuptial wine? His bones are at the bottom of the lotus pond, feeding the carp.” Yet the dragon tattoo across his heart stirred, and when Shen Zhiyi succumbed to the poison, he cut into his own heart and used his blood to save her.
When the memories of the witch clan’s saintess awoke, Shen Zhiyi realized that her sixteen years as the legitimate daughter of a noble house had all been an illusion. The three thousand incantations at the bottom of the lotus pond bound the altered fates of a pair of twins. Hidden in the Fenglin jade pendant was a bloody edict revealing that the late emperor had murdered his wife and heirs. And coiled within the savage wounds on Xiao Jingheng’s back was a forbidden secret the Xiao imperial clan had dared not speak of for a hundred years.
Beneath a blood-red star map, she pressed her blade against the dragon tattoo over his heart. “Does Your Highness want me to be a bride who brings you good fortune, or a blade to kill the emperor?” He turned the embroidered spring saber around and drove it into his own vital point. His profound dragon energy tore the Gu insects from the sky. “I’ll wager the life I clawed back from hell to win you the truth from the King of Hell.”
Withered lotus flowers wept blood, and white lanterns revealed the bones beneath the palace. Golden scales, a deadly reverse scale, and the embroidered spring saber cut through the lies of the afterlife. A marriage born of conspiracy became the flames that would topple a dynasty. When the incantations at the bottom of the lotus pond saw the light again, who was the true phoenix offered as a sacrifice, and who was the evil dragon trapped in a cage?
