Embroidering Blood at Yanxi Palace

On the winter solstice of the sixth year of the Qianlong reign, Wei Yao, heir to a Suzhou embroidery workshop, was restoring a dragon robe when the blood from her fingertip revealed a six-character blood message hidden in a tear in the robe: "Gao killed me. The well. Phoenix blood." When she opened her eyes again, she had become the lowest-ranking maid in the Imperial Laundry, and her sister Wei Ying's body was being dragged from a dry well. The case had been hastily ruled a murder of her master.

To survive, she used her extraordinary skill to mend a robe overnight and secured a place in the Palace of Eternal Spring as Empress Fucha's personal embroiderer. But the favored Noble Consort Gao also saw her as a pawn, forcing her to sew "soul-severing incense" into the robes for the Ceremony of Heaven.

A fire broke out at the Imperial Ancestral Temple. The phoenix robe split, and the truth emerged in the flames. Wei Yao "died suddenly" in public, then returned to the golden palace with the final piece of ironclad evidence from the bottom of the well.

One embroidery needle unravels the palace walls; one strand of black hair binds a wronged soul; one cup of poisoned wine buys ten years of roses in full bloom.

With the well's phoenix blood still fresh, no one in the Forbidden City would ever dare silence an embroiderer again.