The Cinnabar Guide of the Cold Pool

When the first snow fell on the eaves of the Taiji Palace in Liujin City, Jiang Li's fingertips rested against the shards of ice at the bottom of the cold pool. She heard again the sound of the poisoned wine from her previous life being poured down her throat. She had once been the Crown Prince's secondary consort; now she was the sole survivor of a family condemned to execution. He had once been the Third Prince, whose achievements threatened the throne; now he knelt in the ancestral hall and whispered to his late mother's memorial tablet, "I should never have traded the Jiang family for military power."

Newly returned to the world, she hid in a secret chamber of the Qianji Pavilion, turning memories of her past life into a book of mechanical designs. She farmed, spun her web, and planned every step. The trade routes of Vermilion Bird Street, the hidden passages of Black Tortoise Ward, the blood-written words in White Tiger Ward: all became pieces on a board. She and her younger brother depended on each other, but she discovered that the vermilion mole between the frail boy's brows concealed the bloodline mark of the Marquis of Zhenbei. In the imperial court, the Three Enclosures stood like a tripod, while the Twenty-Eight Mansions moved in secret. Every step was taken on a blade's edge.

The turning point came at the Xie family's ancestral grounds. A jade pendant went into the lock, and a rain of arrows cut through the air. Marks on the poisoned arrows revealed the name of someone who had once saved her. Xiao Mingheng appeared, poison hidden in a secret compartment at his waist, yet his gaze fell on Jiang Yan, as if he harbored a secret attachment. She began to understand that revenge was not about severing a single thread, but overturning the entire web.

The price was the fire she had set with her own hands. Amid the sacrificial bonfire, the Jiang family's memorial tablets turned to ash, and her heart had nowhere left to call home.

If power is a mirror that lays bare the bones, revealing the deepest obsessions in people's hearts, then when the truth emerges before the Mystic Ice Mirror, how should humanity choose?