She was a tiger of a daughter from a military family, able to draw a bow that took a hundredweight at the age of twelve. Yet an imperial edict selected her for the harem.
The night before she entered the palace, her mother took her hand and said, “You can’t wield a blade in the palace. You can only pretend to be ill, until everyone forgets you.”
She remembered.
From then on, Qi Yuebin, who once practiced spear and archery on the training grounds, was dead. In her place was a sickly Noble Lady who panted after every few steps and coughed at the slightest breeze.
Three months after entering the palace, she had pretended to be sick for so long that she was almost convinced herself.
When the Empress sent her tonics, she coughed until her face turned red. When Consort Hua came to intimidate her, she was too breathless to speak. When the Emperor visited, she lay on her couch as if she might die at any moment.
But no one knew how the eunuch who had withheld her allowance ended up in the lake. And no one knew who had raised the alarm about the “fire” in Consort Hua’s palace.
Until one day, she saw Zhen Huan kneeling in the imperial garden, so thoroughly cowed by Consort Hua that she could barely raise her head.
At that moment, she suddenly understood: pretending to be ill could save her life, but it couldn’t protect the people she cared about.
So she acted.
At the cry of “Fire!”, Consort Hua fled in a panic. Zhen Huan was saved, and she escaped unscathed.
But when the moon rose, Xiao Linzi rushed in and said, “Noble Lady, the Emperor is about to select new palace women…”
This game had only just begun.
She could pretend to be sick, she could even pretend to be dead, but she could never pretend away
that heart of a tiger’s daughter from a military family.
