The daughter of a disgraced official entered the palace as a servant. After ten years of endurance, she rose to become a senior palace attendant. She thought that wielding authority over the palace’s Bureau of Implements would keep her alive, but on the day the new emperor ascended the throne, she was stripped of every duty and demoted to a lowly palace maid anyone could look down on.
Behind towering red walls, the Empress Dowager saw her as a thorn in her side, the Empress used her as a stepping stone, and the sinister new emperor kept her locked in his bedchamber, humiliating her night after night.
“You understand mechanisms and implements better than anyone, don’t you? Then tell me, will I let you live until spring?”
She gritted her teeth and smiled. “Whatever Your Majesty wants, this servant can do.”
Using the secret records she had kept as a senior attendant, noting who had hidden phoenix-patterned brocade in violation of rank and who had hoarded relics from the previous dynasty, she stirred up trouble and wielded the factions against one another to eliminate her enemies. Even the new emperor became a pawn on her chessboard. Only then did she understand:
The most poisonous thing in this deep palace was never the emperor’s heart. It was the sharpness she concealed behind her gentle expression.
From an attendant in the Bureau of Implements to the hidden master of the imperial harem, she pressed forward step by step over shattered porcelain and blood, all to uncover the secret hidden inside a jade button:
“How much longer will Your Majesty conceal the injustice done to my father?”
