A Game of Power, A Startling Turn

The Ninefold Palace is the most perilous game of strategy in the realm.

A white swan, carrying frost on its wings, arrives and falls into this boundless abyss of political intrigue.

He is Xie Heng: ennobled as a marquis before the age of twenty, granted the imperial sword of execution, and placed in command of the Shadow Guard. He stands at the pinnacle of power. At court, he manipulates the tides and uses his wits to unravel a treacherous chancellor's conspiracy to collude with the enemy and betray the realm. On the snowy frontier, he braves a hail of arrows, using his own flesh and blood to save the crumbling defenses. His new policies cut into the deep-rooted ills of a thousand years, provoking a frenzied backlash from the nobility and powerful clans. The mystery of his origins is another sword hanging over his head, ready to unleash a storm at any moment.

The succession struggle churns beneath the surface, and war flares again on the frontier. The sinister