Synopsis
Rule One for Hostages: Never let a prince from the enemy state touch your pulse.
When Xiao Chengyan seized my wrist, the lamp in the Buddha hall happened to be blown out by the wind.
The most sinister "puppet" prince of Northern Yan pressed his fingertips to my pulse and suddenly chuckled. "The bones of Young Lord Xie look just like those of my 'late' fiancee from Southern Liang."
I grabbed the webbing between his thumb and forefinger in return. "Your Highness's delusions are getting worse."
Later, he slaughtered his way through the palace of Great Liang. He used his sword to part my clothes, but its scabbard gently caught the jade sash as it slipped from me. "Run now, and you still have time."
I hooked a finger into his bloodstained lapel and leaned close. "Does running to Your Highness's bedside count?"
The whole court laughed at me as Southern Liang's abandoned pawn.
They had no idea that I was exploiting the factions' ambition to compete for the throne, selling court secrets, gathering retainers, amassing wealth, and corrupting officials. By the time they discovered what I was doing, Northern Yan was already on the verge of collapse. It was too late.
When Southern Liang's iron cavalry reached the border, I tore open my bloodstained men's clothes and stood atop the boundary marker between the two states. Behind me lay the Northern Yan council I had thrown into chaos; before me stood the hundred thousand archers of my homeland. Yet the princes of Northern Yan all opened their arms to me at once. "Xie Jiutang, stop messing around. Come back to me."
"That year, I carried the secret of my womanhood into the abyss, never imagining the abyss would bow to me."
[Male Lead's Perspective]
"The night before she was to be beheaded by my father, my sword rusted for the first time."
The world says I, Xiao Chengyan, am Northern Yan's sharpest blade: I cut down corrupt officials, quell border rebellions, and imprison hostages.
But no one knows that the first character I taught her to write was 'kill';
that the inside of the shackles I put on her was lined with silk;
that the cup of 'poison' wine was mixed with seven parts honey.
Later, when Fifth Brother imprisoned her, he said, "Xiao Chengyan, I never thought you had a weakness."
I smiled and burned down his residence.
She was never my weakness. She was the oar that ferried me out of hell.
Until I slaughtered my way through the palace of Southern Liang and finally asked the question I had kept hidden in my heart for so long. "Xie Jiutang, when you stood up for me in the alley behind the Imperial Academy, was it sincere?"
Instead, she drove a dagger into my old wound, not yet healed. "Your Highness, have you ever heard of a double-edged blade that strikes the heart?"
[Xiao Chengyan's Rules]
Knowing she is a flower steeped in poison, I still pluck her and pin her close to my heart.
If the falcon I raised with my own hands pecks out my eye, then I'll turn the sky into a cage.
If I must fall into hell, I'll trade a century of infamy for her eternal good name.
[Second Male Lead's Perspective]
"Xie Jiutang, look at me! I, Xiao Chengxu, have never been anyone's shadow!"
I wield the flashiest sword, wear the brightest clothes, and read the most explicit poetry.
They all laughed at me as a wastrel, until she discovered that I had deliberately copied her elder brother's handwriting;
practiced the Xie family's spear technique from nine to five;
and bore a scar on my shoulder just like her brother's.
"You're nothing but a poor imitation of Xie Qian," she sneered, crushing the rouge I had given her.
I caught her wrist and pressed her beneath the alluring candlelight. "Even if every time you call my name, you're looking through me at the bones in that coffin, I'll still be grateful for it."
[Xiao Chengxu's Paradox]
Carve the lock for a stand-in with your own hands, then trap yourself inside.
Fake being attacked ninety-nine times just to see her truly panic once.
If love is destined to be a blade through the gut, I'll swallow it, dipped in my own heart's blood.
[Reader's Guide]
A political intrigue game of deception: the heroine controls the board from start to finish.
Every male lead has eight hundred tricks up his sleeve.
The romance is full of intense push and pull; the political intrigue is complicated, so read with care.
[Synopsis 2]
I witnessed the injustice of this world. It was nothing but an unspoken game among the powerful. They pressed the vermilion brush of condemnation into my hand and expected me to paint a white lotus in the mire. When I refused, they shackled me with the rules of propriety and made me stand in the storm of power, drenched to the bone.
Later, I met someone. He dragged his mud-clay body through the rain to hold an umbrella over me and said, "We don't have to be spotless, but we can help each other keep our souls clean."
[Male Lead's Perspective]
I am one of the powerful, condemned by the common people, and a prisoner struggling in the torrent of power. I was born in the imperial capital, yet the imperial power "killed" me.
Bearing a soul that could not be laid to rest, I became a half-ghost unable to descend into hell. So I gouged out my eyes to make a lamp, broke my bones to make a boat, and forced a path to survival through heavenly punishment...
Halfway there, I met a white crabapple rooted in the world's sins. Greedily, I clung to her branches, hoping to wipe away my filth with her white petals, selfishly trying to drag this pure flower into hell.
But when I looked up again, I discovered she had already ferried me to the other shore.
Prologue:
At the mouth of the Yongding River in the state of Chu stood a three-zhang bronze cauldron, buried in the silt. Its belly was mottled like a patchwork garment, but on closer inspection it was covered in tiny lines of verse. Fishermen said it was the "Heaven's Questions" poem, drunkenly scrawled by the Southern Liang hostage of the Xie family a hundred years ago, when the feudal lords carved up the land. The waves had copied it onto the reefs, day and night. It read:
When this cauldron was cast, the river had already swallowed thirty thousand bones, while songs of peace still rang in the gilded palace.
Those who kneel see dragon scales; those who stand see shackles.
Hungry children eat clay in the shape of Guanyin, yet the prefectures have no grain to relieve the famine.
The historian's brush is ink for the stage, and the official record becomes a robe for the powerful.
You say the ruler's power is bestowed by Heaven. Why not look at the line between dawn and dusk?
At sunrise, farmers stoop like shrimp; at moonrise, wine and meat pile high behind vermilion gates.
You claim that propriety determines our place in the world. Then look:
The classics of the sages are wrapped around sacrificial victims, and the pillars of the grand hall are hollowed out by the souls of ants.
Now three questions hang among the stars:
First, in the library of the Hanlin Academy at Jixia, is there a record of the common people's names?
Second, on the portraits of meritorious officials in Lingyan Pavilion, who remembers the artisans who built it?
Third, in the imperial annals of the Twenty-Four Histories, how many lines mention the women who wash clothes?
Those who call themselves the solitary sovereign must see this cauldron as a mirror.
In the mirror of history are no gods or Buddhas, only people with disheveled hair and dirty faces.
If those who hold power in later generations make farmers sell their children to buy seeds, force seamstresses to pawn their clothes for medicine, and drive scholars to break their bones for fame,
then this cauldron will burst from the earth and shatter your crowns into plowshares!
In the spring of the sixteenth year of Yongzhao, the Xie family wrote this poem for all living beings upon the Cauldron of the People.
Where is the cauldron now? Look beneath your feet, and you can still hear its mournful cries.
Theme: Everyone is equal
