Phoenix Empress Imprisoned: Bowing into the Palace, Love and Hate Entwined

On the day Fu Jian, Heavenly King of Former Qin, conquered Yan, he seized the twelve-year-old prince Murong Chong and took him into the depths of his palace. Everyone said that Fenghuang, Murong Chong's childhood name, was peerlessly beautiful, and that the king had made an exception to dote on him. Though born a man, he had entered the imperial harem and spent night after night pleasing the king in Afang Palace. No one knew that each night, as the boy bent beneath the dragon throne, his fingernails dug into his flesh. He was waiting for the chance to make Fu Jian pay for his blood debt. “I have given you all the love in the world. What more could you want?” Fu Jian brushed the beauty mark beneath his eye, believing he had caged a songbird. Murong Chong lowered his eyes and smiled faintly, swallowing the bloodied taste in his throat. “I want only one thing, Your Majesty... Never abandon me.” Until the imperial decree naming him a consort arrived. The sister he cherished above all else was dressed in bridal robes by Fu Jian's own hands and sent into the very same cage. At a palace banquet beneath swaying lanterns, Murong Chong watched his sister blush and Fu Jian gaze at her tenderly. Suddenly, he remembered the day his mother was crushed beneath the Di people's iron hooves. The wedding candles had burned just as brightly then. “So this is how cheap Your Majesty's love is.” He burned the betrothal jade pendant he had treasured for years, then turned to contact his old allies. The tenderness they had shared at the bedside became a blade. Their sweet nothings turned into poisonous schemes. With his own hands, he pried Fu Jian's empire loose, inch by inch. The flames of the Battle of Fei River rose, and a million Qin troops scattered like sand. On the day Murong Chong led the Xianbei cavalry to lay siege to Chang'an, Fu Jian roared from the city walls, “Fenghuang! You said you would never betray me!” Murong Chong drew his bow and shot down the royal banner atop the walls, his smile bewitching as a demon's. “Your Majesty taught me well. Love, taken to its extreme, means drinking blood and devouring bone.” “I used my empire as a cage to imprison you for life.” “And I offer your empire as a sacrifice, to bury your love.” From the night he bent his head and entered the palace, this game of chess was destined to end only at the far end of a sea of blood.