Jade Shattered, Abyss Sunk

“Shen Yan, look at the snow in Chang’an. Doesn’t it look like the moonlight we buried with our own hands outside Xuanwu Gate that year?”

At seventeen, Shen Yan was the most precious moonlight in Su Heng’s heart. He had picked the first spring cherry blossom in Chang’an for him, shielded him from blades in dark alleys, and even when his family fell, willingly accepted imprisonment in the Su residence as “the son of a traitor” just to give him a peaceful life. But Su Heng didn’t know that the words “colluding with the enemy” on the bloodstained letter that night were false evidence Shen Yan had bought with half his life. Nor did he know that the poisoned wine he had given Shen Yan was a “talisman” Shen Yan had prepared for him all along: only by making Su Heng hate him could Shen Yan keep him alive amid the power struggles.

Three years later, Shen Yan returned to Chang’an as a strategist for an enemy kingdom. From atop the city wall, he watched Su Heng, clad in golden armor, become the new emperor’s most trusted general. Amid the clash of blades, Su Heng’s spear pierced his shoulder, but he abruptly stopped when it touched the half of a broken jade pendant in Shen Yan’s arms. It was the token he had once tied around Shen Yan’s waist himself, with a tiny inscription on the back: “May we meet year after year.”

As the truth was peeled away layer by layer like an onion, they realized they had long been the sharpest blades in each other’s lives, and each other’s only light. But a sea of blood-deep hatred lay between them, and their families’ honor and disgrace haunted them. Should they join hands and descend into hell together, or let this love sink forever into the abyss?

“Su Heng, if there’s another life, let’s not meet again.”

“Shen Yan, if there’s another life... I’ll find you again, even if you’re in hell.”