Chapter 1: A Soul Falls in the Forbidden City A torrential night rain fell, and Lin Wan awoke with a start amidst the piles of ancient books in the library. She rubbed her sore eyes. Open before her was *The Secret History of the Qing Dynasty: The Yongzheng Emperor*, a line of small, red-inked annotations on a page particularly jarring: "Shen's daughter, Zhiwei, seventeen years old, entered the palace as a concubine, and later disappeared without a trace." She remembered researching the historical prototypes of *Empresses in the Palace*, but didn't know when she had fallen asleep. But she was no longer in the library. A carved bed, blue gauze curtains, and a strange face reflected in a bronze mirror—willow-leaf eyebrows, almond eyes, skin like jade, yet carrying a hint of timidity and unfamiliarity. She suddenly…
