Trapped Behind Vermilion Walls: The Substitute Consort Kills Without Mercy

On the fifteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, heavy snow sealed the palace.

The wind cut like a blade, hurling goose-feather snow against the low eaves of the Yeting Palace.

There was no charcoal in the laundry room. Only a sputtering oil lamp swayed in the corner, casting the thin, gaunt shadow of someone on the floor.

Shen Jinghong knelt barefoot on the flagstones. Her fingers had long since turned purple with cold, and blood seeped from the cracks in her skin, mingling with the icy water and staining the coarse swaddling cloth she was scrubbing red.

She said nothing, only rubbed, scrubbed, and wrung it out mechanically.

Her movements were slow, but methodical. Every diaper had to be rinsed three times, and she used her fingernails to scrape clean every crease and corner. It was the first rule of survival she had learned in the convict labor camp: do a poor job, and you would be beaten; do it too well, and you would be envied.