In the autumn of the sixtieth year of Qianlong's reign, Fucha Rongxi entered the palace as a noblewoman of the Bordered Yellow Banner.
At thirteen, dressed in a crimson wedding gown, she was carried through a side gate of Shenwu Gate, her heart filled with pride in her family's glory.
On the night she was summoned to the emperor's bedchamber, the old emperor, nearly eighty, had barely touched the front of her robe when he suddenly died.
Rongxi froze on the imperial bed, her robe half-open, listening as the eunuchs' voices broke into wails that echoed throughout the Forbidden City.
After half a month of widowhood, the new emperor issued an order sending her to a nunnery on the outskirts of the capital.
For three years, with only a green lamp and the ancient Buddha for company, she thought her life had been buried there.
Until, in the year of Guihai, torrential rain poured down and a mountain flood roared through the convent walls.
She knew that if she survived this time, then Fucha Rongxi would cease to exist in this world...
