The Foot-Washing Maid Wields Her Blade to Conquer the World

Three years ago, the entire Shen clan, a family of Grand Tutors, was brutally executed. Blood ran in rivers.

Three years later, a new servant girl joined the Great Liang palace, a lowly foot washer whose brain had supposedly been cooked by a fever. On the surface, she was gluttonous and timid, accepting every beating and scolding. She was so terrified of breaking a glass cup that she nearly wet herself. In truth, she used her foolish act as the perfect cover, seeing the heavily guarded palace as one vast chessboard.

She never killed anyone with her own hands. Instead, like a cold-blooded observer, she turned the harem's most closely guarded weaknesses, desires, and information gaps against its occupants, making them kill for her.

First, she used a scent that clashed with another to ignite infighting within the domineering and favored Noble Consort Li's faction, stepping over Li's corpse and into the heart of power. Next, she forged an old letter, casting the dignified, hypocritical empress under suspicion of witchcraft and throwing the harem into chaos.

Then she turned the tables on the amorous prince, the ambitious royal heir, and the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, all of whom had tried to use her, turning each into a stepping stone as she gradually dismantled the Great Liang emperor's imperial schemes and his foundations in the court.

In this slaughterhouse, where power devoured everything, no one could ever win her sincere affection.

At last, amid wind and snow, she stepped over the corpses of all her enemies, poisoned the faithless emperor, and enthroned an infant puppet. In one leap, she became the iron-fisted Empress Dowager of Great Liang, ruling from behind the curtain.