In the twenty-fourth year of Yuanhe, under the Great Ye dynasty, the entire Shen family, tutors to three generations of emperors, was sentenced to execution. Shen Wangshu, the eldest legitimate daughter, fell from the heights into the Music and Dance Bureau, where she endured every humiliation. To stay alive, she tested poison on herself and attached herself to Prince Ding, Xiao Jue, who was infamous for his brutality and cruelty.
When they first met, he was the executioner and she was the lamb awaiting slaughter. He watched coldly as she knelt in the mud, her dignity ground into the dirt, then gripped her throat and sneered, “So much for the Shen family’s pride.”
Once she entered his game, she became a master perfumer, while he was a demon with an insatiable sweet tooth. She used the Shen family’s secret art, Moonlit Bone, to control the soul-devouring headaches that plagued him. She became the medicine he could not live without, and the sharpest thorn in his heart.
His feelings shifted from cold exploitation to an obsession with possessing her. Xiao Jue personally broke her weakness and reforged her into something unbreakable. She slapped the deposed crown prince, slaughtered the household of Minister Lu, and used one blade to kill the empress dowager, advancing step by step across the ruins of imperial power.
When the Shen family was exonerated and the truth revealed, she tried to walk away. The mad prince who had once declared that “women are nothing but pieces on a chessboard” dropped to one knee in front of everyone and clutched the broken jade at her waist. His eyes bloodshot, he said, “Shen Wangshu, I’ve won this realm for you. Where do you think you’re going?”
