I didn't cry when my mother's head rolled to my feet.
One hundred and thirty-seven people knelt on the execution ground. Zhao Chengqian was sitting on the high platform, spinning Buddhist beads in his hand. He picked one, and one member of the Shen family died.
He spared my life and took me as a slave in Yeting. He said, "Daughter of the Shen family, I want to see how long you can endure."
During my three years in Yeting, I learned to keep my head down, shut up, and pretend it didn't exist. The pain was so painful that I couldn't sleep at night, so I hid my mother's bronze mirror in my arms. The back of the mirror was engraved with my father's word - peace.
Until I went to the cold palace to deliver food and met the man whose legs were broken by Zhao Chengqian. He was the person his father saved, and he was also the person whose legs were broken while interceding for the Shen family.
He said to me: "Your father has something in his hand. Something that Zhao Chengqian is afraid of."
The old eunuch in the cold palace hid the secret edict for three years, waiting for a surviving Shen family member. He handed me the secret edict and said, "I'm waiting for you to survive."
Zhao Chengqian was afraid of secret edicts. He didn't know where the secret edict was, but he would know - someone was looking for it.
Chun Cao took ten hits for me and was locked up. Aunt Fang found me but did not report me. She just looked at me and said, "Some things are more important than death."
Zhao Chengqian read out my name in the imperial study. Footsteps sounded behind me, getting closer.
I touched the bronze mirror and secret edict in my arms. There are one hundred and thirty-three left.
I will count them one by one. But this time, I won't cry again.
Intention: Grow in tolerance, seek light in darkness. As an orphan, she inherited the ambition of a general, regained her faith on the road to revenge, and worked together with people who were also crushed by fate to create a peaceful world.
