A Ship Sinking in an Ashen Sea

(A scoundrel with a sincere heart + bad ending + possessive pursuit + love born of bitter hatred) (Please don’t flame if it’s not to your taste. My writing is limited, but I’m writing out of love.)

[A golden cage may lock away its prisoner, but the one trapped inside is never a canary. It is a blade of vengeance tempered in fire.]

Shen Qingci is the last spark of defiance left from the former dynasty. She enters the cage not to cling to life.

Is Xiao Jin, the tyrant of the Yin dynasty, her prisoner, or the offering she chose with care?

Every inch of the Eastern Palace’s forbidden gardens bears the cold imprint of the old dynasty’s blood. She swallows her tears and blood, wielding frailty as a blade and patience as a shield, weaving a web of destruction beside the demon’s bed. Once a princess of exalted rank, she is now a hunter from the abyss. She doesn’t want Xiao Jin’s life. She wants the entire Yin dynasty to pay for the sins committed in his name!

But she underestimates the devil’s obsession.

Xiao Jin, an iron-blooded emperor who uses human hearts as pieces on a board and paves his way with bones, has a mad flame in his eyes that could consume everything. He sees through her disguise and welcomes it all the same. His bloodstained fingertips graze her throat as he murmurs like a lover, “Want to destroy me? There’s no need for an offering…”

“I have already placed the entire world upon the altar for us!”

Atop the Pagoda of Salvation, a false Buddha lowers its eyes in pity. In the sea of ashes, survivors struggle against towering waves. An ancient prophecy clings to ambition and despair like a curse.

When the cage becomes a trap and the altar is raised

She wants his empire to fall, and the dead avenged;

He would offer up the land and rivers as a sacrifice, just to keep her by his side forever!

Will the flames of vengeance consume everything? Or will a mad emperor overturn even Hell and offer it as a bride-price?

A world-shaking gamble begins, with all under heaven as the game board and all living beings as the stakes!