The Phoenix Throne Shakes

In the third year of Yongqing, on the night the new emperor Xiao Jingheng ascended the throne, a blood moon hung in the sky. Beneath the palace candles, Empress Chen Yazhi ran her fingers over the Book of Changes on her desk, then crushed a divination tortoiseshell between her fingertips. Its twenty-eight cracks matched the secret orders of the twenty-eight star-host guards. The former dynasty’s imperial seal appeared in a dry well; dispatches from the northern frontier shattered the illusion of peace; a counterfeit heiress among Jiangnan salt merchants, an intoxicating fragrance in the Grand Tutor’s residence, and privately forged weapons in the hands of the Northern Garrison General all became poisoned arrows aimed at imperial power.

In the eyes of the world, she was a decorous mistress of the six palaces. But when the emperor’s left hand, missing a finger, brushed her neck, she finally glimpsed the truth behind their three years without consummating the marriage: the map of the former dynasty’s territory hidden in a secret chamber of the Imperial Study was somehow connected to the heart palpitations that plagued the Chen clan. When deadly poison was concealed among tribute from the Western Regions and the dragon robe in the imperial mausoleum stirred murderous intent, she placed a black stone on the Starwatching Terrace and used the phoenix seal as bait to weave a grand scheme.

The ramblings of a madwoman in the Cold Palace exposed a bloody case buried in the inner palace for twenty years. Flames from the Grand Canal uprising illuminated the remnants of a map of the realm. On the night a fire at Fengyi Palace consumed the false peace, the empress’s nine-phoenix crown fell before the steps. The cinnabar in her palm matched the wound on the emperor’s missing finger perfectly. It turned out these vast lands had long awaited their player to reshape them with her own hands.