The Clouds Have Not Risen Yet

In the spring of the twenty-third year of Jingde, sixteen-year-old Xie Tingyun was ordered to enter the palace to study. He was born in a Qingliu family, and with his father's teachings of "reading to understand reason and convincing people with virtue", he gave new clothes to the old beggar in the cold night on the first day he entered the palace. This act of kindness became a turning point in his fate. The third prince Zhao Heng watched coldly from the teahouse: "The children taught by the Xie family are really innocent." Xie Tingyun didn't know that his kindness had been marked as a weakness, and his family had been included on the chessboard. In just a few months, his father Xie Cong was imprisoned for "corruption" and "committed suicide" in prison; his mother was depressed and died soon after; the Xie family's ancestral home was sold, and a century-old reputation was destroyed. Xie Tingyun discovers a blood letter among his father's belongings, and the truth is cruel - his father was silenced because he discovered that the deficit in the household department was actually due to the corruption of the third prince and his party. The so-called kindness and integrity are vulnerable to power. From that moment on, the boy who donated the clothes died. Xie Tingyun, who survived, hid the soft sword left by his grandfather close to his body, and the last light in his eyes was completely extinguished. He returned to the palace wall, put on a mask of meekness and respect, and began to walk a double-agent tightrope between the crown prince's trust and the threat of the third prince. He once plotted against his enemies during a hunt in Xiyuan, he once learned the art of killing from the one-eyed old man in the blacksmith shop, he once held a black iron token that could mobilize dead soldiers, and he once knelt in front of the Buddha and asked himself if he had become an evil ghost. But the real power play has just begun. When Xie Tingyun found out that he was just a pawn in the game between the third prince and the prince, he made a choice: rather than being manipulated by others, it was better to become the chess player.