The Secret History of Wu Zetian

The imperial palace is a bottomless abyss, its steps paved with bones. She was not born a phoenix, but she would rise through blood and flame.

In the sixth year of Yonghui, a cold wind swept through the palace women's quarters, bearing an imperial edict for the selection of consorts and carrying Wu Meiniang into the magnificent meat grinder of the Tang imperial harem. Beneath its golden steps and jade halls lay the wronged souls of abandoned wells; amid the spring warmth of the peppered chambers lurked poison-sharpened blades. She saw the world laid bare: the humiliation of body inspections that stripped away her dignity, the chill of the Cold Palace that froze her soul. The jade steps where Lady Xu bled from all seven orifices, and the verbal blades hidden beneath Abbess Jingxuan's mask of compassion, all revealed humanity at its darkest beneath the crushing weight of power.

From lowly palace maid to the Prince of Jin's bedside, from the edge of a dry well to the moonlit grounds of Ganye Temple, Wu Meiniang took every step on a knife's edge. She learned to carve blood curses with her golden hairpin and bind hearts with vows, tempering her soul beneath the Empress's iron hand and amid the false piety of the convent's meditation rooms. Desire was her only aphrodisiac; survival, her ultimate law. When she shed the last trace of innocence, all that remained in her deep, shadowed eyes was an undisguised hunger for the pinnacle of power.

This is no courtly romance between a talented scholar and a beautiful woman. It is a path through a hell of blood and flesh. Watch as a woman who refuses to sink becomes a piece on the board in Wu Zetian's sweeping harem power game, wagering her own body and blood in a dark allegory of “high emotional value” that stirs every passion and pierces the hidden depths of human nature.