At fifteen, Shen Yurong, the legitimate daughter, watched her mother cough up blood and die. As she stood before her mother’s coffin, she overheard her stepmother whispering. A silver plum-blossom hairpin and half a bloodstained prescription revealed a poisonous plot lurking deep within the marquis’s residence. Sent into the imperial palace as a pawn, she watched her younger half-sister marry the general she had secretly loved. From low-ranking consort to empress, from ruling behind the curtain to relinquishing power, her eighteen years in the palace saw the nine tiers of jade steps stained red with blood. Double agents, sisters turning against each other, mysteries surrounding her birth, power struggles… At last, when she reaches the pinnacle of power, she sees through the cruelest truth: before wealth, the poor are no more than blades of grass; before power, the wealthy are no more than ants; and all power will ultimately vanish in the river of time. This is an epic of revenge, growth, and letting go, as well as the tragic song of a woman reclaiming her fate in an age that devours women.
