In the third year of Chengqi, the Imperial Astronomical Bureau observed the stars at night and saw a faint glimmer of bloodlight in the Purple Forbidden Enclosure.
On the night the court painter Shen Rongzhi used crane’s blood as his pigment to paint “The Crane’s Shadow” across Consort Mu Yungui’s back, a mysterious fire broke out in the ninefold palace, burning down half of Qiw Wu Palace.
Everyone said the director of the Directorate of Ceremonial had a heart of ice, but no one knew that three hundred blood paintings were locked away in the depths of a cold pool. In them, women smiled and frowned, every fold of their clothes soaked in the painter’s heart’s blood. Mu Yungui had no idea that the “antidote” she drank each month was actually a life-prolonging parasite refined from the eyes he gouged out and the bones he took from his own body.
“Did you know, Yun Niang, that the Thread of Immortality must be nourished with human flesh and skin?”
Shen Rongzhi smiled as he pulled open his official robe, revealing the densely packed tattooed scars on his spine. Each scar was arranged to form her eyes and brows.
When Mu Yungui tore open the ninth layer of mounting paper on “The Crane’s Shadow” and glimpsed the truth of that rainy night years ago
It turned out he had kept the twin-stemmed begonias tossed to her during the Lantern Festival for fifteen years.
It turned out the poisoned wine that made her hate him was the chance at life he had begged for on shattered knees.
It turned out the cruelest scheme in this imperial palace was one he had written into the Book of Life and Death for her, using his soul as ink and his bones as a brush…
**The Immortality Calamity**.
[Two yandere leads / body-double romance / forbidden soul-painting sorcery]
“You want a realm stretching ten thousand miles? I’ll give you a splendid world.”
“I want Shen Rongzhi.”
“…Then let your longing be the bait, and my bones the incense,”
to offer up a dream from which they would never wake.
My new story is here! You’re welcome to read my work on Tomato Novel. I hope you enjoy it.
