The fallen noblewoman Bai Yuetong enters the imperial palace with her pale amber eyes, carefully navigating the blood-written scriptures in the Buddhist hall and the eerie shadows in the cold pool. She uses a false pregnancy as bait to stir up turmoil in the harem, defeats the arrogant Consort and the duplicitous Empress, and engages in a battle of wits with the scheming emperor. When the secrets of the dry well and the struggle for imperial power come to light, she turns a bloodstained letter into a blade and rises from discarded concubine to empress, writing her own bloody legend beneath the crimson clouds over the Phoenix Palace.
