In the thirty-third year of Yonghui in the Great Zhou dynasty, a pair of bloody eyes suddenly appears on the Lantern Festival's “Ten Thousand Years of Splendor” tapestry. Three hundred embroiderers are executed, and Shen Huaijin, the Secretariat Director, trades the names of the northern frontier rebels for a noble title and high office. But the true embroiderer, his younger sister Shen Xiu, becomes an anonymous body on the executioner's block. Secretly rescued by the eunuch Feng Xuanji, she is imprisoned in the Embroidery Bureau and given one year to embroider a “Map of Mountains and Rivers” in exchange for her brother's life. Shen Xiu appears to comply, but secretly uses imperial medicines, steel thread, and black silk to create a “Fire Veins Map of the Imperial City,” intending to burn the capital and take it with her. On the night of the winter solstice, the map is complete, but the truth takes another turn: Shen Huaijin knew all along that his sister was alive. He deliberately used her to embroider the map, drawing Feng Xuanji's faction into the open before sacrificing his sister a second time to eliminate any future threat. Using her brother's white hair as a fuse, Shen Xiu ignites a “backlash fire.” The Shen residence burns to ash overnight, leaving the map among the charred bones. The emperor orders the bureau to hunt down the culprit. Shen Xiu disappears into the snowstorm and emerges as the leader of the Brocade Affairs Bureau. She wields silk thread as a blade, striking down the powerful. With every kill, she leaves behind a scrap of brocade, one phoenix eye fewer; each empty space is just large enough to hold a human heart. From that day on, the world knows: an embroidery needle can weave auspicious clouds, but it can also overturn mountains and rivers. The most poisonous thing is not political scheming, but being cast into the abyss by one's own kin and still using a single glimmer of brocade to grip an entire age by the throat.
