One day, Su Jinyue was forced into a substitute marriage and sent to the Cold Palace, where she awakened the Handbook of Survival Rules for Palace Maids.
Rule One: At the second quarter of the midnight hour, the lights must be put out. Be one breath late, and you die.
Rule Two: If you hear someone singing, you must go out and listen to the whole song. Leave before it ends, and you die.
Rule Three: Trust no one, including Consort Shu, the emperor, and even yourself.
Everyone thought she had been sent to the Cold Palace to await her death. That was, until the Mid-Autumn Palace Banquet, when the Noble Consort publicly humiliated her by demanding she recite three hundred palace rules.
She recited every one without a single mistake. Before the Noble Consort could even smile, Su Jinyue raised her sword...
“Rule One Hundred and Seventy-Four: Anyone who defies their superiors must be killed without mercy.”
The entire hall fell into deathly silence as blood splattered three feet in every direction. The rulebook shook wildly:
[Warning: You have triggered a red rule, the taboo of regicide! Punishment: Erasure!]
Su Jinyue glanced down at the handbook and smiled.
“Before you erase me, take a good look at who really rules the rules.”
The emperor, Xiao Yan, was a madman. The Dowager Consort hid daggers behind her smile, the Noble Consort held six pages of a copy of the handbook, and beneath the palace walls lay a dried-up well where a demon consort had been buried a hundred years ago.
Just as Su Jinyue began to think she was merely a pawn, someone told her:
“You weren't chosen by chance. You were deliberately cultivated for eighteen years as a vessel for the rules.”
And the demon consort said to have died suddenly bore the same face as her.
Beside the dried-up well, a black cat licked its paw.
“Before she died a hundred years ago, she left these words: I'll be waiting for you at the bottom of the well.”
Reader's Note:
· A fictional dynasty · Rule-based horror × palace intrigue and power struggles × fated reincarnation
· The heroine is no saint. Under the rules, she trusts only herself
