In the winter of the seventeenth year of Yonglong, seven-year-old Shen Shengsheng loses everything amid a blizzard. Her father, Shen Weiqing, submits a blood-written memorial at the palace steps and is beaten to death before the emperor, the tyrant Li Huan. All eighty-one members of the Shen family are executed. Her mother, Lin Yuan, flees north through the snow with her and seeks refuge with Yun Qike, the Grand State Preceptor of Northern Yan.
For ten years, Shengsheng lies low and trains day and night in strategy, medicine, poisons, disguise, and plotting, tempering her hatred into a double-edged blade.
In the twenty-seventh year of Yonglong, Later Tang and Northern Yan once again arrange a political marriage. Shengsheng returns to Chang’an as an accompanying lady-in-waiting. She is no longer a helpless orphan begging for mercy. Now she is the one moving the pieces:
She and Crown Prince Xiao Jue of Northern Yan use each other as pawns. Feelings quietly grow between them, but neither is willing to back down.
She joins forces with the seventh prince, Li Changji, to eliminate corrupt eunuchs and reopen an old case, turning the court upside down.
She conspires with her childhood friend, Vice Minister of Personnel Su Yan, to make Li Huan and his mother pay in blood for the debts they owe.
But when the evidence of regicide is conclusive and her enemy dies after drinking poison, Shengsheng finally understands her father’s last words: “Avenge yourself if you must, but don’t let your heart be imprisoned.”
The end of revenge isn’t destruction, but a new beginning.
She lays down her sword and opens a school for commoners amid the misty rains of Jiangnan. Xiao Jue, the man who once faced her across a chessboard and fought alongside her to break into the imperial prison, waits for her, giving her ten years. Each year, when apricot blossoms bloom in the spring drizzle, he waits for her to look back.
This is a story about hatred and forgiveness, destruction and rebirth.
Only when Shen Shengsheng finally understands that letting go of hatred isn’t weakness, but takes more courage than revenge, does she become the person her father hoped she would be:
A woman not imprisoned by hatred, but living for the justice in her heart. We should all be the masters of our own lives.
