When Su Wanqing, a 21st-century top-tier star, plunged into the void as her snapped safety wire sent her hurtling down, she opened her eyes in the Cold Palace. Spiderwebs hung everywhere, palace maids withheld her charcoal, and Emperor Xiao Chengyu saw her as a stand-in for the bride he had married in someone else’s place. The bitter taste of forced-down apricot kernels still lingered in her mouth. Even more ironically, the favored consort she had “poisoned” was secretly sleeping with a eunuch in a hidden passage in the Cold Palace, plotting to overthrow the emperor.
