Guide to the Houting

She was a foreign princess, married into the imperial palace for a political alliance. She thought they would be together for life, never realizing that in the depths of the palace, favor without love meant nothing but loneliness and desolation. She was the empress, mistress of the six palaces, but once she had been a lovestruck young woman forced to marry the crown prince and separated from the man she loved. In the decades that followed, she never once forgave the aloof ruler. She was the legitimate daughter of a military family, virtuous and composed, faithfully managing the six palaces without complaint, all because she loved her husband dearly. She was a noblewoman of the highest rank, married to the crown prince in a single day and by his side for more than a decade. Her youth faded and the years slipped by; behind her arrogance and high-handedness lay loneliness and pain. As the white moonlight in the emperor's heart, the empress replied, “Don't bring that scumbag to me!” In the great hall, all because she wore what she shouldn't and donned what she had no right to wear, he flew into a rage, so furious his eyes seemed ready to split. “Outrageous! You dare wear the phoenix and the crown of the empress, symbols of the central palace. Are you trying to take her place?!” The power of life and death belonged to the emperor. His favor and wrath were both imperial grace. The ruler's heart would always be the hardest thing in the world to fathom.