A Matchless Brocade Zither

I was the most inconspicuous cleaning maid in the palace. Then, on the day Zhen Huan miscarried, I knelt outside the hall and revealed the truth. "Your Highness didn't fall. You were poisoned with cinnabar." The emperor demanded sternly to know how I knew. I raised the face I had never shown anyone. "This servant's father was..." "The former chief physician of the Imperial Medical Office, executed ten years ago." --- The winter of Jianchu's seventh year was bitterly cold. Chaos reigned in Broken Jade Pavilion. Physicians hurried in and out, palace servants held their breath, and even the few half-dead plum trees in the courtyard seemed to have stopped breathing. Jin Se knelt on the ice outside the corridor, head lowered, just like all the other low-ranking palace maids,