On the day Pei Yunshu was born, a blood moon appeared in the sky, and her mother died in childbirth. A deranged Daoist pointed at the gates of the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion and shouted, "A bringer of calamity is born! The entire household will perish!"
So her own father abandoned her at Hanzhong Temple, and she became a cursed child in the eyes of the world.
For fifteen years, she endured torment at the temple...
A discipline whip tore into her flesh, Buddhist scriptures were used to brainwash her, and even before meals she had to kneel and drink three bowls of talisman water.
The abbot said it was to cleanse her sins.
Her stepmother said it was to atone for her crimes.
But she believed not in fate, only in the sharpened hairpin she had honed herself.
When she returned to her family at fifteen, everything changed.
Her hypocritical stepmother hid knives behind her smile, her gentle stepsister secretly slipped her poison, and even her grandmother, who had suddenly begun to show her affection, concealed schemes in her eyes.
Only the man in a bamboo hat who broke into the meditation hall that night sneered as he tore the truth open:
"Your mother didn't die in childbirth. She was murdered."
Smiling through blood, she took her place in the game.
When the Buddhist hall went up in flames, she locked her enemies inside.
Later, the new emperor ascended the throne, and all the people bowed before him.
The "bringer of calamity" whom everyone once shunned now commanded the dynasty's most secretive judicial bureau.
The meditation hall where she had once been imprisoned had long since been burned to the ground by her own hand.
Amid the flames, she picked up the blood-soaked Book of Atonement and smiled faintly:
"The true source of sin in this world has never been me. The incense in this Buddhist hall cannot burn away my hatred."
"I, Pei Yunshu, will never be anyone's pawn."
"If Buddha will not save me, then I will build my own hell."
