Ten Days of Jinghe

A body held in the palm atop Mount Beimang, shut behind the gates of a secluded courtyard, entering and leaving a palace of pearls. Beneath a golden cage, wings are broken; teeth are clenched against wind and thunder, while layers of mist obscure the truth.

In brocade robes beneath the sun, he whips a white horse, idly taps its jade stirrups, and wanders back and forth, glancing over his shoulder. A halberd with a dragon-shaped blade bites into corpses and drinks blood. At night, he watches the beacon fires as trees die and nests collapse.

In the first year of Jinghe under the Liu Song, the young emperor issued an edict. Chu Yuan, a handsome official in the Ministry of Personnel, was granted ten days of service from Princess Shanyin.

At the time, Songwen, one of the princess's maids, never imagined she would return to the Jiankang Palace, back to the depths of her nightmare, and tear apart the curtains and the sacrificial altar with her life. She would save the innocent from death, and kill the guilty.

Shen Wenji, the second son of the regent Grand Commandant Shen, had no idea that he would soon stumble into a filthy pit, suffer torture and execution, and lose everything. He would be neither a fine general nor a loyal minister.

In those ten days, some died unjustly and some were reborn. The fields were littered with starving corpses, while the stables held fat horses.

Mayflies emerge from the earth, their hempen garments white as snow.

Also:

The male and female leads alternate viewpoints, one chapter at a time.

The leads meet only three times in the entire novel, and the romance is only lightly touched on. This is really more of an ensemble story.

Updated daily, ten thousand words. The whole novel is complete. Extras depend on circumstances.

Theme: Those who die after following their proper course meet a rightful end. Those who die in shackles do not.