Scarred Beauty: Snow on the Rouge of the Cold Palace

She was once a peach blossom just opening amid the misty rains of Jiangnan. Only after entering the palace did she realize that all its springtime beauty was an illusion. Favor was a blade, rouge was poison. On a night when plum blossoms withered and souls were severed, they stripped her of her finery, crushed her, and cast her into the cold palace, where blood and snow were buried together. But when the eunuch shrilled out the decree ordering her death, she dabbed balsam juice on her lips and took a broken bronze mirror for the moon: “If my fate has run its course, then I will draw the final stroke myself.” A tale of the most brutal yet dazzling night in the imperial harem: Every lash mark was her medal, every drop of poisoned wine her crown.