The jade-faced devil is a disguise. The true face is the King of Hell. Only when you come to the door carrying a head can you call yourself an old friend!
Seven years ago, at Shuo Feng Fort on the northern frontier, the entire Dingbei Marquis Xiao Yuanshan household was slaughtered, and flames blazed into the sky. Only his pampered young son, Xiao Che, survived. Frail and sent back to the capital, he became a laughingstock.
Seven years later, a bizarre counterfeit banknote case in the capital's darkened streets exposed the rigged imperial examinations and the smuggling of salt and iron. The “Jade-Faced King of Hell,” who spent his days cockfighting, chasing dogs, and getting drunk among the flowers, willingly walked into the death cell and smiled at the torture rack.
“Brother Gu, how about becoming an upright official?” His quiet words in prison set the pent-up anger in a poor scholar's heart ablaze.
“Miss Shen, do you and I share the same fate when it comes to this ‘bone-chilling poison’?” The cold-faced physician's silver needle pierced through layer upon layer of disguise.
With a folding fan in hand and dressed in commoner's clothes, he entered the game, speaking and laughing as he made his moves:
The Cui clan of Qinghe, leaders of the honest faction? Just watch that imperial exam list turn into a death warrant!
Feng Bao, the powerful eunuch who commands the inner court? Just listen to those palace whispers become arrows through the heart!
The Prince of Jin covets the throne, while the crown prince is soft-hearted? More bones will lie beneath the dragon throne!
When war flares up again along the border, the spoiled young lord casts off his old ways and takes up his spear. Behind him, the secret network of Ting Yu Tower spreads like a web, poor scholars burn with fervor, and beneath the cold moon, the physician with silver needles goes with him into the jaws of death.
“Minister Cui, was the fire at Shuo Feng Fort warm enough back then?” Xiao Che smiled as he strode through blood. “Today, it's your turn to have that skin of yours roasted.”
Yet at the end of the bloodshed, the profound eyes above the dragon throne were the true bottomless abyss of cold...
Power struggles stretch as wide as the sea, and schemes burn through the heavens. Watch as the one who sees through the game enters it, and the one who moves the pieces becomes one of them. At the summit of the imperial palace, will the karmic fire consume the old world, or will a solitary lamp light the way to a new realm?
The Cold Palace: an epic of power struggles, where the sea of flames leaves only ashes beneath the sand.
