I Shattered My Phoenix Destiny and Ascended the Throne

When she was seven, the Imperial Preceptor read her fate: The Phoenix Star has descended. She is destined to stand beside the Son of Heaven.

From that day on, she was no longer Chu Pingting. She was the “Phoenix Star, Lady Chu.”

Her grandmother asked her, “Do you want to be empress?”

She said, “I do.”

After seven years of lying low, she prayed for rain, and stepped from the inner chambers into the halls of government.

Two princes fell for her, one sincere, the other obsessive.

She maneuvered between them, never giving her heart and never taking sides. She was only the hand raising the venomous insects.

She made the realm her chessboard and people’s hearts her pieces.

But she failed to account for one thing.

The emperor, who had loved her as his own daughter, handed a hairpin to him on his deathbed and said, “In all my life, I gave away hairpins, yet never saw the one I loved wear one.”

For the first time, she was afraid.

Afraid of losing a member of her family.

Later, she died amid a misunderstanding.

She thought she was a sinner, that the foolish child was her fault, that everything had gone wrong.

She set a fire and burned herself to ashes.

And someone named Chu Zhao burned to death with her.

But she never knew, even as she died, that her child was alive and well.

Just not by her side.