Shen Muheng, the illegitimate daughter of the Marquis of Zhennan’s household, lost her mother at an early age and spent seventeen years treading carefully in the marquis’s home. When her legitimate older sister refused to enter the palace, Shen Muheng was made to take her place. Starting as the lowest-ranking palace attendant, she was sent to Cheng’en Hall, the most remote corner of the imperial harem.
All she wants is to stay alive and endure until she can leave the palace at twenty-five. But the death of the palace maid Yulan makes her understand: if you don’t fight, you’ll die all the same.
Nanny Su, living in the Cold Palace, recognizes the writing brush and parasol-tree leaf left behind by Shen Muheng’s mother, unearthing a bloody case buried for twenty years. Her aunt, Baizhi, was burned alive beneath a parasol tree in the Cold Palace twenty years ago. Before she died, she wrote the character for “injustice” in blood on the window lattice. Shen Muheng’s mother witnessed the truth with her own eyes and was poisoned soon afterward to silence her. The mastermind behind the tragedy points to the highest-ranking woman in the harem: the Empress Dowager.
Even deeper secrets begin to surface: the late emperor did not die of illness, the emperor’s birth mother was someone else, and Shen Muheng’s bloodline is intricately tied to it all.
From timid to resolute, from a pawn to the one moving the pieces, Shen Muheng advances cautiously through this gilded cage. She will uncover the truth and demand justice for her mother and aunt, but above all, she will live on her own terms in this palace that devours people.
This is a palace intrigue about power, truth, and redemption. The phoenix has not perished; it is only waiting to rise from the ashes.
