Shen Hanzhou, a hostage prince from Beidi, conceals a wildfire of vengeance behind eyes as cold as the frozen north. The heart-devouring Gu on his wrist is his sharpest blade. Xie Linyan, a hidden nobleman of Shengjing, conceals a hand capable of turning the tides beneath his moon-white robes. The soulmate Gu binds the hatred he has never spoken aloud.
Both are peerlessly beautiful, and both are hunters lurking in the shadows. When their eyes meet for the first time in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, they recognize their own kind: equally obsessive, equally ruthless, and equally yearning for a single ray of light in the mire.
The Gu from southern Xinjiang seals their alliance. The soulmate Gu entwines their fates, while the heart-devouring Gu stands ready to consume their enemies for each other. They are the most dangerous wild cards in the court’s game of chess. Together, they topple the powerful, avenge old wrongs, and use ruthless methods to clear the thorns from their path.
No one knows that these two “venomous snakes” who stir up the world will lick each other’s wounds in the dead of night, offering one another every last scrap of tenderness they have. They are each other’s armor and their weakness, accomplices bound for hell together, and lights that save each other in the darkness.
When their Gu resonate and their heartbeats fall into sync, these avengers with no royal blood will use blood and bone as their pieces and carve out a path of coexistence that belongs to them alone, through the rotting halls of court and temple.
