A carefully orchestrated betrayal sent Shen Youyue, the legitimate daughter of the Chancellor's household, tumbling from the clouds into the mire. Before her wedding, her fiance and half-sister joined forces to frame her. Branded "depraved," she was driven from her home on a stormy night and cut off from all her relatives. As she lay near death in the street, Su Li, the star courtesan of the Zuixiang House, saw the unbroken defiance in her eyes and took her into the pleasure quarter.
No one could have imagined that a woman once born to wealth and privilege would be tempered into steel amid the world of courtesans. Refusing to give in, she took the name Yue Niang and devoted herself to song, dance, poetry, and painting. Her performance of "Song of the Rain at Linling" astonished the capital and unexpectedly caught the attention of Emperor Xiao Yu, who was traveling incognito. In her pipa accompaniment to a sword dance, he saw both a young woman's tenderness and an unyielding spirit, and the emperor, long accustomed to flattery, fell for her.
An imperial edict summoned her to the palace and made her Noble Lady You. But within these red walls, the schemes were more ruthless than those at Zuixiang House. A knife lurked beneath the empress's dignified mask; poison was wrapped in Noble Consort Li's beauty. Rumors followed her everywhere, and accusations came one after another: "disrespecting the emperor," "having an affair with an official from outside the palace." She remembered Su Li's advice to "conceal your edge, keep a low profile, and wait for your chance," but with every seemingly hopeless predicament, she realized that yielding would not keep her alive.
So she began to lay her plans. She won over the matrons in the imperial kitchen, placed informants in the various palaces, and formed a secret alliance with Consort Xian, who had also been suppressed. When evidence that the empress's elder brother had colluded with the enemy was presented before the emperor, and when she steadied the rear lines as a woman during Prince Ning's rebellion and broke apart the rebel forces with a scheme to sow discord, the woman once cast aside like a worn-out shoe rose step by step from Noble Lady to Virtuous Consort, and ultimately ascended to the empress's throne.
