In the autumn of the 17th year of Taiping's reign in Dayin, the blood of 312 members of the Shen family was spattered at Caishikou. The monument of collaboration with the enemy and treason was nailed into the soil of Chang'an City. No one dared to cry out for their injustice.
The former imperial concubine Shen Weishu was deprived of her title and thrown into a permanent alley. She fell from Fengguan Xiale into a moldy straw pile. Iron chains locked her ankles, the Queen Mother's men crushed her fingers, and the half-year of darkness reduced her to a skeleton.
Everyone thought she would die in that cell.
Everyone thought that the young emperor Xiao Wuwang was the obedient chess piece in the palm of Empress Dowager Chu - he ascended the throne at the age of fourteen, was extremely filial to his mother, gentle and respectful, and never disobedient.
No one saw how calm his tone was when he stopped Bai Ling, who was about to die, at the gate of Yongxiang. No one saw him sitting on the broken chair with missing legs, staring at her biting the cuffs and setting the bones without saying a word, something cracked under his eyes. No one knew that three days before the accident in the Shen family, Shen Weishu's father knelt in front of him and entrusted his daughter's life to the emperor who was younger than his daughter - "I can't stop him. But Weishu is innocent."
This is a story in which an emperor used three years of forbearance, a chess game in an imperial city, and a bloody affection that no one could see to repay 312 human lives.
It is also the story of a woman whose bones were crushed, holding the truth with her severed fingers, using distrust as armor, and crawling out of the abyss inch by inch.
