Jade Ashes Chasing the Light

In the winter of Chengde Year Nineteen, the fire in the Eastern Palace burned for three days and three nights.

Everyone said that the crown princess, the crown prince's grandson Qi Min, and Princess Consort Changxin had all perished in the flames. Only Nanny Lan, clutching a child who was burned black and barely breathing, knelt in the snow in a side courtyard of the Prince of Changxin's residence. Again and again, she kowtowed. “Your Highness, this is your son, Young Master Yuanhuai... He, he's still alive.”

As a bronze mask was fastened to his face, six-year-old Qi Min awoke in agony.

Through the eyeholes, he saw the terrible face reflected in the bronze mirror and heard Nanny Lan's choked voice. “From today on, you are Sui Yuanhuai. You must live, keep living, so you can reclaim everything that belongs to you.”

He didn't understand what “everything” meant.

But he remembered his mother's resolute yet gentle eyes as she pushed him into the sea of flames, and the feel of her scalding tears falling on his forehead.

“Min'er, endure it.”

And so he endured for twenty years.