The thunderclap of the third year of Yonghui rang out from her palm.
Shen Qingdai knelt in the ancestral hall, raised the jade pendant that served as her betrothal token above her head, then smashed it to the ground.
It wasn't the humiliation of having her engagement broken that drove her to this. It was the blood-written message that seeped from a crack in the jade the moment it shattered:
“On the seventh day of the seventh month, in the nineteenth year of Zhenguan, the Imperial Seal left the palace.”
Outside, twenty carts of betrothal gifts from the Cui family, there to break off the engagement, blocked the street.
Inside, Cui Yan, her childhood friend who had been away from home for three years, dismounted in a hurry. Seeing the bloodied shards in her hand, his face turned deathly pale. “You know? Then you must also know that assassins will reach Chang'an before noon today.”
One jade pendant shatters, and Chang'an is thrown into turmoil.
A token of love is broken, and the Taiji Palace, a thousand li away, is shaken.
When a dark red blood message reveals the truth behind the Imperial Seal's disappearance ten years ago,
when three armies of unknown origin suddenly appear outside Luoyang,
when the Buddha statues at Ci'en Temple are splattered with human blood during a night raid
Shen Qingdai clenched the broken jade and said to Cui Yan, “You men are always trying to keep secrets hidden, but you don't realize that some pieces of jade are sharper broken than whole.” With this blade of shattered jade, she would cut through the thousand-li fog between Luoyang and Chang'an
and make the emperor feigning sleep on the Dragon Throne see:
Beneath the splendor of a flourishing age, how many people used vows to conceal lies and wrapped betrayal in loyalty? It all began in the autumn of the third year of Yonghui, with the clear chime of shattering jade that reached Chang'an before the thunder.
