When the Qing court turned against the foreigners, her family became embroiled in a political conspiracy. Fifty-some members of her family were slaughtered overnight.
She fled for her life with her maid, searching for a way to clear her family's name. After receiving lessons in intrigue from a master of the imperial harem, she endured deadly trials and hid her identity before entering the tangled world of the inner palace.
In the palace, politics shifted and storms raged. The empress dowager, the emperor, and the consorts all wielded ruthless means...
In the great mansion, she swallowed her anger, disguised herself, and struggled at every turn to find a way through.
Scheming and deceit, false affection and empty promises. From her initial calm detachment, she gradually set out on a path of ruthless ambition. Through endless dark nights, there would be no turning back.
After witnessing bloodshed, poison-licking, the eating of infants, sharing corpses, and orgies, she finally looked back in a daze. In the dim light, a crowd of spirits was waiting for her...
There was a time when the most poisonous one wasn't herself, but...
It is said that Empress Wu of the Tang dynasty used this poison to kill her consorts. It contained the venom of the seven-inch golden krait, with poison at the tip of its fangs; the venom of the seven-inch silver krait, also with poison at the tip of its fangs; the poisonous foam from the crest of a crane at the point of death; the eyes of a mud-dwelling tiger-skin □□; deep-mined realgar; the venom and spittle of deep-sea floating fish; and century-old ox bezoar from the bottom of the river. These alone were not poisonous enough. Adding arsenic made the poison even more potent. It wouldn't kill you just to be near it. To make it ten thousand times more deadly, you would need...
