Consciousness drifted, like a drowning man.
Bone-chilling cold, the thick stench of blood, and a metallic sweetness in his throat surged into his fading senses. The last thing he saw was the grotesque roofline of the imperial study, its soaring eaves and ornate beams warped by raging flames and splattered blood. His elder brother’s refined face, mere inches away, looked like a demon in the cold gleam of a blade. And her... As she rushed toward him, a red stain bloomed across her snowy-white sleeve like the most despairing plum blossom in winter.
Pain, hatred, and resentment all gave way at last to an empty silence that swallowed everything.
He died in the bloody night of the succession struggle. When he opened his eyes, he had returned to the age of twenty, now the least favored illegitimate son of the Prince of Zhenbei’s household.
In this life, he would turn the schemes of palace intrigue into strategies for the battlefield, and save the princess consort who was destined to die.
A fiery female general pressed him at every turn, while a proud, aloof princess from an enemy kingdom secretly sent him a blood-pact alliance.
While the capital’s nobles still mocked him as a “barbarian brute,” he had already begun to seize the immense power that could topple the dynasty.
