It's midnight in winter, and the sky is still dark.
The cold wind was like a knife, cutting through the small courtyard of Huanyiju deep inside the palace wall.
A pool of ice water was glowing with a blue-grey color. The soap locust mixed with blood foam condensed into fine red crystals in the cold air, and fell to the bottom of the pool.
Su Jinci knelt by the pool, burying her fingers deep in the biting ice water to scrub the bright yellow dragon robe.
Her hands were already in disfigurement—the fingertips were ulcerated and curled, with criss-crossed cracks. Every time she moved, thin threads of blood were drawn out. They floated among the foam for a moment, and then were frozen into dark red crumbs.
She lowered her head and her shoulders were slightly bent, like a dead branch that had been broken by wind and rain for three years.
The legitimate daughter of Xinglin, who was once able to identify herbs by their smell and judge life and death by her pulse, is now just a slave in coat coded "Yiqi".
