Have you ever seen a flower struggle up from the muck, spending every ounce of strength it has just to pursue a ray of illusory sunlight? Then, the instant it reaches that light, it discovers that its roots have long been soaked in the poison of fate...
I, Wang Xueqin, was once an actress on the stage, my long sleeves sweeping through the air. But overnight, I became the ninth concubine of Commander Lu, a man feared far and wide! They say I am a substitute, a plaything, a shadow flower blooming unseen in a deep courtyard!
But I refuse to accept my fate! If I cannot have his heart, then I will have his power, and control of the vast Lu estate! I will make everyone who looked down on me and shut me out grovel at my feet! In this reckless wager of love and desire, I staked my youth, my soul, and even... my own flesh and blood!
When my daughter, whose veins carried her lover’s blood, looked at me with clear, watery eyes just like her father’s and asked through her tears, “Mother, was there ever a moment when you truly loved me?”... At that moment, it felt as if thousands of needles had pierced my heart at once!
When the illegitimate son I valued as much as my own life was callously driven out as a bastard, crying, “Mother, save me!”... At that moment, my world crumbled in an instant!
And when the lover who had once sworn eternal devotion to me and promised to take me away to the ends of the earth trampled our past into the dirt for a handful of money, pushing me into an abyss of no return... Only then did I suddenly realize that all the scheming and struggling of my life had been nothing but a grotesque and tragic one-woman show!
The commander’s gun pressed coldly against my forehead.
