The Empress Won't Shed a Tear Today

In the twenty-ninth year of Yonghe in the Great Zhou, Shen Zhiyao was bestowed upon the Marquis of Pingxi as a concubine. On the night she was to wear her phoenix crown and red wedding robes, she set herself on fire, faked her death, and returned with a blood oath. In her previous life, she loved Emperor Li Jin with all her heart, yet he annihilated her clan, cut the child from her womb, and left her to die in a sea of flames. In this life, she swore to make her enemies pay in blood and tears. Disguised with a new face as a healer, she saved the Empress Dowager, ended a plague, exposed the fabricated imperial dragon vein, and drove the ministers to their knees to depose Li Jin. Xiao Lin, a hostage prince from Northern Yan, offered her a hundred thousand iron cavalry and drank the Heartless Gu poison. She, too, made the empire her game board, advancing step by step until she ascended the throne. The once-favored consort was forced to become a nun, the emperor's beloved was castrated and sent to the imperial entertainment bureau, and the Marquis of Pingxi was hanged from the city gate. Li Jin was imprisoned in the old Haitang residence, where he copied her name a thousand times. In the end, she shattered the jade seal and named her nation Zhao. She made Xiao Lin the Guardian of the North and forbade him from entering the capital for the rest of his life. When Li Jin took an arrow for her and lay dying, she shed not a single tear. She only tossed a copper coin into the brazier. "The debt is paid." The histories record: Emperor Zhao never took an imperial consort, never shed a tear, and never forgave anyone in her second life.