Since ancient times, beautiful women have been blamed for bringing ruin. To ease Daji’s sorrow, King Zhou had Bi Gan’s heart cut out. To win a beauty’s smile, the feudal lords were summoned with false signal fires. People blame beautiful women for the fall of kingdoms and the ruin of families, as though every calamity were caused by women.
Chu Anning was once a princess of Ning. On the day her kingdom fell, she disguised herself as a eunuch and fled the palace. Outside the Meridian Gate hung the bodies of her father, mother, and elder brother. She traded her jewelry for half a cake of bread and survived thirteen days on the run with nothing but a dagger.
To stay alive, she sold herself into the Zhang household as a maid and bided her time. When the Seventh Prince’s troops surrounded the estate, she offered a plan of her own: use her beauty as a weapon and employ seduction against the Fourth Prince.
From then on, she was both a pawn and a player. She bought the loyalty of the Seventh Prince’s shadow guard, A Jiu, and joined forces with the Fourth Prince to lay a deadly trap. After the Seventh Prince died, she became empress, only to discover that her indecisive husband was handing the kingdom over to someone else. One night, she kissed his lips and drove a dagger into his heart. In court, she cut down the heads of her opponents. “Whoever can lead a weak kingdom to glory can be its ruler.”
In her life, she killed both those who loved her and those she loved. On the day she unified the realm, she stood atop a mountain peak, tears sliding down her face.
She spent her life proving one thing: beautiful women are not the source of ruin. Weakness is.
