Based on real history * Devoted Emperor * Amorous Noble Consort * Clever Yao Maiden * Loyal Eunuch * The turbulent Ming Dynasty.
In the winter of the first year of the Chenghua era, the Yao uprising at Dateng Gorge raged, and a thousand-year-old giant vine crashed down in the flames.
A secret memorial was presented to the emperor: “The dragon veins in the southwest are stirring. There is a risk that the two Guang provinces will become independent within a hundred years.” A eunuch inspector was ordered south to suppress the dragon veins. After surveying the terrain and waterways, he discovered that the dragon energy had already slipped along the Xi River, quietly cutting through the mountains and gorges, stirring beneath the surface.
Li Tangmei, a Yao maiden from Guiling in He County, Guangxi, was captured and sent to the palace to serve as a female clerk in the library.
No one knew that this mountain-bred Yao maiden bore a love curse. One ordinary night, she was summoned to the bed of Emperor Xianzong of Ming, and conceived a royal heir.
The birth of Prince Zhu Youtang swept her into the turmoil of Consort Wan’s campaign to murder the emperor’s sons.
In that same war, another Yao boy from Dateng Gorge, Wang Zhi, survived the castration knife.
He climbed the ranks step by step, took charge of the Western Depot, and became the emperor’s sharpest hound, striking fear into the entire court.
The two hometown boys, both regarded by the Han Chinese as “foreigners,” met by chance in the shadowy depths of the Forbidden City.
Their shared accent and a secret rooted in their common origins brought them into a quiet alliance. Torn between power and loyalty to their homeland, they forged a forbidden pact in the hidden corners of the palace.
A Yao consort and a eunuch defy fate.
Years later, the prince of Yao descent ascended the Ming throne and became a ruler who restored the dynasty. His mother never returned to the Yao mountains, not even once, before her death.
