Ashes in the Palace: The Tortured Fate of a Concubine-Born Empress

“In a dark room of the palace's service quarters, Gu Zhaoning clutched her father's blood-written plea, ‘I have no intention of rebellion,’ her nails digging into her palm. She was the illegitimate daughter of a convicted minister, a low-ranking maid in the laundry bureau, yet beneath her washboard she hid a medical text long lost to the Imperial Medical Academy. She had planned to lie low and investigate the case, but after saving the Empress, she was dragged into the whirlpool of palace intrigue. The cold-blooded Emperor Xiao Chengyu held her medical records and sneered, ‘So you've learned all about the Gu family's poison.’ She healed his old wounds, yet he used a trap set by her legitimate elder sister to imprison her in the torture chamber. She cleared the favored concubine's false accusation with her poetry, but he insisted on wagering with her sincere heart. Rising from palace woman to Jieyu, she moved step by step toward the center of power, and he fell for her even as he tested her. Until their child died and the old case resurfaced: he personally pushed her off a cliff, only to break down when the truth came to light in the blood-written letter. ‘So I was the executioner who destroyed everything you had!’ Only after love has brought them unbearable pain does he understand his regret. Her hand trembles around the poisoned wine. ‘Kill you, and the Gu family's name will be cleared. Save you, and the chaos in Dazhao may be brought to an end...’ Must the love and hatred within these palace walls consume everything before they can find redemption?”