Xu Guyan is the most feared emperor in the Southern Liang dynasty.
While traveling incognito in Jiangnan, he deliberately approaches the salt merchant Shen Youqing.
Everyone thinks Shen Youqing is just a merchant who can barely lift a sword.
Until assassins strike one night and he snaps a poisoned blade in half with his bare hands.
“Your Majesty knew all along?” Shen Youqing asks with a smile, kneeling in the rain.
Xu Guyan toys with a bloodstained hidden weapon. “Why else would I have kept you here for three months?”
Later, with Shen Youqing chained to the imperial bed, he hears the emperor cut his own wrist. Warm blood drips between his lips. “The antidote... needs my blood as its catalyst.”
Five years later, a new emperor takes the throne, and Shen Youqing becomes the Marquis Who Guards the Nation, with power over the entire court.
Yet in the imperial garden, he snaps with his own hands the beloved sword of the late emperor.
“People of the martial world hate having their freedom taken away most of all.”
A young eunuch sees the new emperor pick up the broken pieces and say softly:
“Before Father died... he begged me to set you free.”
Very pretty.