The night the entire Shen family was slaughtered, a heavy snowfall buried 370 wronged souls in Chang'an. Shen Jingye crawled out of the mountain of corpses, his eyes filled with a hatred that would burn everything to ashes. The shadow in dark robes who had issued the secret order became the sole target of his life.
He infiltrated the household of Regent Xiao Che like a lone wolf with sharpened claws, but after one test after another, he broke through the icy mask to find a burning warmth beneath. Xiao Che would tuck the covers around him on cold nights, shield him from hidden arrows with bloodstained hands, and use political machinations to lay out a thorny path to survival for him at court.
“Are you protecting this realm, or the life of this traitor?” Shen Jingye pressed a blade to his neck, his eyes reddening.
Xiao Che only smiled, blood trickling from the corner of his lips. “I protect this realm so you can live to see it become just.”
When the Empress Dowager's plot to usurp power coiled around the throne like a poisonous vine, and ironclad proof of the Shen family's treason emerged from the sands of the northern frontier, they finally understood: their so-called hatred was merely a trap laid by fate. One sought to clear his family's name; the other sought to secure the empire for the young emperor. Their paths should have diverged, yet they converged at last amid blood and fire.
The moon over Chang'an could not illuminate the tangled schemes, and the snow of the northern frontier could not bury their righteous hearts. When the tiger tallies were joined as one and their blades turned toward a common enemy, they finally understood:
The greater good of their country and its people was never an either-or choice. And each of them had long since become the part of the other's life that could never be relinquished.
“Xiao Che, if you meet my parents on the road to the afterlife...”
“I'll tell them I took good care of their son.”
