In the middle of winter in the twenty-seventh year of Yong'an, Shen Weiwan opened her eyes from a pool of blood.
Overnight, she was reduced from a beautiful concubine to the daughter of a criminal who was executed by the whole family - her father was imprisoned, her brother was exiled, and no one in her mother's family was spared. The surgeon was the current empress Xiao Yushu.
Xiao Yushu does not love the emperor, does not strive for favor, only loves power. In the thirteen years since she entered the palace, she poisoned, framed, silenced, framed, and killed all those who stood in her way, weaving the harem into an airtight web. The Shen family was wiped out because Shen Weiwan's father had the power to check and balance the Xiao family.
In the cold palace, the poisoned queen came in person, and the poisoned wine was put to her lips. At the critical moment, the emperor's old illness relapsed, and Xiao Yushu had to postpone her murderous intention. It was this moment of respite that Shen Weiwan caught.
She was unwilling to give in. If someone respects her a foot, she may return it a foot; but if someone harms her family and destroys everything she has, she will repay him a hundred times. Both good and evil must be repaid - this is Shen Weiwan.
She crawled out of the cold palace not to survive - she could survive on her knees, but to win. Xiao Yushu was asked to kneel in front of him, to take off the phoenix crown from the enemy's head and put it back into her hair.
But Xiao Yushu's foundation was too deep: the Xiao family held military power, and half of the people in the court were their party members. Every time Shen Weiwan found a clue, she would cut it off, and every time she found a witness, she would be silenced - and she gradually discovered that the silencers came not only from Fengyi Palace. The emperor looked at her, the queen mother looked at her, and everyone wanted to hold her knife.
But Shen Weiwan didn't care. What she wants to do is never whose knife it is. What she wants to do is to be the one holding the knife.
