The Illegitimate Daughter Shines: His Majesty’s Cast-Off Empress Steals the Show

Wind and snow seeped through the paper windows of a secluded palace hall. Shen Qingci had just been forced by her elder half-sister to swallow an osmanthus cake laced with “Turner’s Lure,” but before the deadly poison could take effect, she bit down on the antidote she had hidden beneath her tongue. She had died to this same trick in her previous life. This time, she would make her tormentor pay in blood. Her elder half-sister, Shen Ruowei, ruled the six palaces by virtue of her resemblance to the late empress, but she had no idea that the younger half-sister she had trampled into the dirt had long since sharpened her claws beneath the broken window of the Cold Palace. When Shen Ruowei entered the Cold Palace again with a “gift” from the imperial kitchen, she was met not with pleas for mercy but with Shen Qingci’s cold laugh and the evidence she flung at her: the crushed osmanthus cake had turned a sinister black when exposed to a specially prepared powder. It was damning proof, enough to threaten Shen Ruowei’s position as a Jieyu. What chilled Shen Ruowei even more was the Empress Dowager’s sudden decree summoning Shen Qingci. This concubine whom the new emperor had discarded like trash walked gracefully across the red carpet of Cining Palace, then used “a warning from the heavens” as the reason for the Empress Dowager to bestow on her, right then and there, the Phoenix-Luan Pendant, a symbol of authority over the six palaces. “Since His Majesty says I bring misfortune to my husband,” Shen Qingci said, her fingertips brushing the cold jade pendant as her gaze swept over the young emperor, whose expression shifted unpredictably on the dragon throne, “why not let me relieve His Majesty of his burdens? The filth in the imperial harem needs a thorough cleaning.”