On a snowy night as her kingdom falls, Shen Zhao clutches her three-year-old son, A Bao, and leaps from a sheer, thousand-foot cliff. The cinnabar mark between her brows burns bright. A flock of birds spreads its wings to catch the child, and her phoenix destiny begins to awaken.
Everyone says the tyrant Xiao Jintian is cursed to be alone, doomed to bring death to his closest kin and live out his days in solitude. But when he discovers that A Bao can break his fate, he forcibly keeps mother and son in the imperial palace, hoping to “raise a child and change his destiny.”
Shen Zhao bides her time, using the wits of a fallen princess and the tyrant’s power to protect her child. A Bao may be innocent and young, but he can hear the fortunes of the realm and summon birds. His “childish words that come true” again and again turn a court full of memorials accusing him of being a demon child who will bring ruin to the country into paeans celebrating the phoenix’s arrival.
When the old powers at court once more force their way into the palace, the magnificent sight of birds flocking to pay homage to the phoenix tears through the night. When the iron-blooded emperor stays up late to learn how to make milk cakes for his little one, scalding his hands in the process. When the fallen princess finally takes up the military seal and stands above the nine gates
Phoenix fire sweeps across the land, and a new era replaces the old. She rules the realm, he becomes a doting father, and their child is the brightest cinnabar mark of all.
This is an intense tug-of-war between “the fallen princess, the cursed tyrant, and the little phoenix”:
She schemes to restore her kingdom, he seeks to change his fate, and A Bao only wants his mother to stop crying.
When the phoenix feathers have all burned away and the realm is won over, they finally understand
The tyrant insists on being her child’s father, while she insists on having the realm as her bride price.
