The Covenant of the Crown

At nineteen, Bing Jiyaoguang, daughter of the country’s third-generation wealthiest family, chose to marry Heli Xie, the border commander reshaping his era, just as the family’s scepter began to show its first cracks.

An alliance signed by both fate and ambition.

He needed the century-old capital and unmatched connections behind her to build his sphere of power;

She needed the guns and troops at his command to lay the most indisputable foundation for a new order, as her father calmly retreated behind the scenes.

In public, they were allies supporting each other at the edge of a cliff. In private, there was his possessiveness spiraling out of control, and his conflicted praise: “You’re leaving me?”

“You can’t wear clothes like that.”

“My wife… is the wisest person I’ve ever met.”

Her heart had never truly left him.

His hands, too, had tried countless times to reach through the haze of power and touch her.

The wheels of fate ground on into the next generation: he forged their eldest son into the sharpest blade, and the young man ultimately became president; their second son died in the smoke of war before he could inherit the crown of finance and oil; their youngest daughter’s unspoken feelings became the family’s deepest rift.

When the blood of their closest kin seeped into the grooves of the scepter, Heli Xie finally claimed the crown of prime minister. But he deliberately stopped there, paving the road to the presidential palace as the starting point for his eldest son.

The throne of power was pushed to its peak.

And the woman who had defined it all from the beginning stood on the far side of the light, taking stock of all the past sacrifices.

When the reckoning was complete, she would write the final diagnosis of this “patient” with her own hand.