Chang'an Chess: Winds Rise at the Rainbow Skirt Pavilion

Synopsis of Chang'an's Gambit: Winds Rise Over the Rainbow Palace

During the Jinghe era, Chang'an is a magnificent royal city where envoys from every nation gather, but it is also a game of chess fraught with hidden currents. Shen Zhiwei, an embroidery heir of the Artisans' Pavilion, loses her family overnight, left with only the secret art of Celestial Brocade and a blood debt against the people who slaughtered them. She conceals her talents and enters the palace as the lowest-ranking embroiderer, laying traps stitch by stitch and inch by inch searching for the truth. Deep within the palace walls, she encounters Xiao Che, disguised as an idle prince.

He bears the burden of an unresolved military weapons scandal from the frontier ten years ago. She carries the hatred of her murdered family. The two begin as players wary of one another, but gradually become allies willing to share life and death. As the Second Prince's ambitions, the great clans' schemes, and the old emperor's secrets are gradually revealed, they discover that this game is about more than a struggle for imperial power: the lives and dignity of artisans throughout the realm are at stake.

An embroidery needle can hide a secret message, and a strand of silk can trigger a mechanism. A place of tender romance becomes a battlefield, and a seemingly idle man conceals soaring ambitions. From the palace workshops to secret places in the martial world, from court intrigue to a game involving the entire realm, Shen Zhiwei and Xiao Che put themselves on the board and their hearts in play. In prosperous Chang'an, they must weave a legend that fights for the lives of ordinary people and breaks the deadlock of a changing age.