Twenty years ago, Liang Shiyu traded a vat of water and a steamed bun to a blind old fortune-teller for half of a fish-shaped jade pendant and a prophecy.
“Little girl, twenty years from now, before Jingzhe, stay away from water. You are destined to face this calamity.”
Twenty years later, her family forced Liang Shiyu to marry the son of the county’s richest man, who suffered from severe burns and polio. Desperate on her wedding day, she jumped into a river and slit her wrists in an attempt to end her life.
At the same time, in another dimension, a new empress had just emerged victorious from a struggle for power in the Great Zhao Dynasty. She ordered her subordinates to slaughter ten thousand rebel soldiers as an offering to Heaven. Standing before Taizhao Hall, she looked down at the thousands of heads falling across the square without a trace of pity. Her five-clawed dragon robe billowed in the wind, accidentally revealing the fish-shaped jade pendant hanging at her waist, swaying with it.
