Everyone in the capital knew that Regent Yuan Chu kept a canary. She was the Chancellor’s youngest daughter, seemingly innocent but with claws sharp enough to draw blood. He indulged her every whim, until she became so bold as to want to fly off to the Western Regions. Stroking his jade ring, he chuckled, “As it happens, I’ve been looking for a plot of land in the Western Regions to offer as a betrothal gift.” That night, he wiped the tears from the corner of her eye, his voice gentle as a blade. “Be a good girl. Do you still want to marry off to the Western Regions?”
Mu Zeran, the Chancellor’s legitimate daughter and the capital’s brightest, most dazzling pearl, had loved Regent Yuan Chu for years.
But when her family was dragged into a struggle for imperial power, she was forced to seduce someone and steal a letter, cutting off her own feelings with her own hands.
During a palace coup, Prince Chen, who had usurped the throne, poisoned her with a parasitic curse. She forgot the man she loved and became a caged bird in the hands of her enemy.
Yuan Chu, the iron-fisted regent, reclaimed the throne after fighting his way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Over the next three years, he conquered one state after another, his fury raging until he became an emperor whom everyone feared as a mad demon.
Every day, he toyed with a jewel-encrusted dagger. Every night, he slept alone in an empty courtyard, killing every woman who came near him.
Everyone said Emperor Yuan Jing utterly despised Mu Zeran, who had betrayed him and conceived a child by a rebel.
That was until Loulan in the Western Regions presented its holy maiden, who brazenly demanded the entirety of Great Jing’s territory before the court.
She carried the scent of osmanthus, caught his deadly dagger with her bare hand, and smiled as she called him by the long-unheard name, “Yuan Chu.”
The entire court was outraged. Only he opened his eyes and set pen to paper:
“Granted.”
