Ling Weiwei, an elite modern lawyer, is reborn amid a pool of blood in the Cold Palace, burdened with the monstrous false accusation that she poisoned a royal heir. She uses loopholes in legal procedure to refute the decree sentencing her to death, chemical testing to detect poison and break the case, and the principles of optical refraction to reconstruct the truth. After forming an alliance with the cunning regent Xiao Yan, she wields modern legal thinking as a blade, systematically dismantles the empress’s power, and uncovers the secret of the royal family’s matricide.
“What do you really want, Your Highness: revenge or reform?” Xiao Yan asks with a smile as he crushes a plum branch between his fingers.
Ling Weiwei snaps the last copper sparrow chain. “I want to rewrite the rules of this world.”
From a condemned prisoner in the Cold Palace to the founder of the Legal Affairs Bureau, she shatters the glass shackles that imprison women and rewrites the dynasty’s order with bamboo-strip statutes. Even if she must stand against her entire era, she will bring the light of law into the deepest chambers of the palace.
