Shadows on the Marquis's Chessboard: A Maid Takes the Lead

She was sent into the tiger's jaws as a pawn. Only after being reborn with vengeance in her heart did she discover that she was the only living breath left in this deadlocked game.

In her previous life, Su Wanyue was the lowliest laundry maid in the Marquis of Jingyuan's household. Her lovely appearance got her chosen as a “trial bride” and sent to the general's residence as a pawn to test the waters. But overnight, she was accused of slaughtering an entire household and died in the snowbound execution ground, full of hatred.

When she opened her eyes again, she had returned to three months before her fate took its turn.

This time, she saw the invisible hands pulling her strings. The cruel steward, the seemingly benevolent marquise, the inscrutable marquis, even the young lord who appeared to be a wastrel: everyone wanted to place their own piece on her. The ordinary jade pendant her mother had left her began to grow inexplicably hot against her neck. A bloodstained letter delivered in the dark warned, “Become a trial bride and you die.” And forces from every side were quietly closing in around her...

Only then did she realize that beneath her lowly exterior ran the last “phoenix bloodline” of the former imperial house. She was a living key to an astonishing treasure, and the crucial hidden piece that could set the imperial court in turmoil.

“If everyone wants to play the game...”

Beneath the dim oil lamp in the laundry room, she took up her embroidery needle. She mended the first torn garment, and with it, her shattered fate.

From the marquis's inner residence to the palace's secret halls, from the general's bloody case to the treasures of the former dynasty, she navigates the marquis's surveillance, the Phoenix Pavilion's expectations, the Embroidered Uniform Guard's probing questions, and the Starwatch Tower's gaze. Using memories from her rebirth to foresee danger and the lowly status of a maid to uncover secrets, she turns every scheme against her into a stepping stone.

As the pieces on the board begin to devour the hands that move them...

The maid who once knelt humbly in the snow that night is raising her bloodstained fingers,