Shadow Guard Substitute: Your Highness, I'll Protect Your Life

[Oath of Blood in the Dark Night, Claiming the Phoenix Throne]

On the eve of the new emperor’s coronation, Crown Prince Xiao Ye is struck by a poisoned arrow and left on the brink of death. His shadow guard, Lin Qi, takes the fatal blow with her own body. The instant her silver mask shatters, the face revealed is none other than that of the crown prince’s half-sister, who supposedly “perished in a sea of flames” ten years ago!

Xiao Ye grabs her bloodstained collar. “Why did you infiltrate the Eastern Palace?”

She coughs up blood and laughs coldly. “You were the one who promised me outside the Cold Palace… that your ‘shadow’ would take every blade meant for you.”

Before she can finish, a second hidden arrow pierces the crown prince’s heart. As he lies dying, he tears the black iron clasp from the arrow’s tail. Its Northern Frontier dragon insignia is irrefutable proof that his seventh uncle murdered his own kin to seize the throne!