Poison in the Palm, Breaking the Noble Branch

[Historical romance: forced possession + mutual redemption (twisted) + deranged eunuch + false and real political schemes + intense push and pull + dark symbiosis]

In a single day, the powerful prime minister’s household collapsed, and every member of the family was executed.

Shen Suisui, once the lofty, moon-bright young lady of the prime minister’s house, was thrown into the lightless imperial prison and subjected to endless torment.

Just as her fingernails were being torn out and she lay on the verge of death, Yan Jiuyuan, the dreaded commander of the Eastern Depot with power over life and death, stopped before her in a bright red python robe, his boots standing in a pool of blood.

No one knew that this all-powerful “Ninth Thousand Year” had once been the lowliest stable hand in the prime minister’s stables, so insignificant he didn’t even have a name. He had once been beaten half to death for looking at her too long.

Now their positions had reversed, and the world had been turned upside down.

“Miss, how does it feel when the poison takes effect?” He toyed with the antidote, smiling like a flower.

To protect her three-year-old brother, the only family she had left in the prison, Shen Suisui cast aside every shred of dignity and crawled at his feet like a dog, begging for the smallest act of mercy.

She thought endless humiliation and torture awaited her.

But later, the officials of the court were shocked to discover that Yan Jiuyuan had flayed and dismembered, in the cruelest ways, every political enemy who had kicked Shen Suisui while she was down or mistreated her.

As the capital was swept by turmoil and imperial power changed hands,

the blood-soaked, mad eunuch climbed the palace steps, where countless lives had flourished and perished, and personally draped an empress dowager’s robe over her shoulders.

Kneeling on one knee, he placed his bloodied executioner’s blade in her hand, his eyes filled with crazed devotion. “Your servant welcomes the Empress Dowager as she assumes the regency.”

There is no redemption in this world, only two mad souls, deformed by their shared life in the mire, locked together until death.