After Eighteen Years of Bloodletting, the Concubine-Born Daughter Returns to Claim the Phoenix Throne

Xue Qingmu was the illegitimate daughter the Xue family wanted hidden from the world. She and her mother were kept in a remote village, where her blood was drawn every month to keep the legitimate daughter alive. Though only eighteen, she looked like a woman in her sixties or seventies. By chance, Xue Qingmu saved a strange man. She thought she would finally escape her miserable fate, but instead, the entire village was slaughtered and her mother died a horrible death. “How could I have been so stupid as to believe a man’s promises?” When Xue Qingmu accidentally discovered that her youthful looks had returned, she concealed her identity, took the name Qing Yu, and prepared to take revenge. Xue Qingmu drove a sharp blade toward You Jianyang’s chest. He did not dodge, and a bright splash of red bloomed across his chest. You Jianyang gazed at Xue Qingmu’s reddening eyes and asked quietly, “Who are you, really?” In his early years, the emperor once traveled south of the Yangtze River and had a remarkable encounter. He declared that a daughter of the Xue family was destined to be a phoenix, and would one day become the mother of the nation. Xue Qingmu looked at the legitimate daughter who had been nourished by her blood for more than a decade. “An illegitimate daughter is still a daughter of the Xue family. No one knows for certain who is destined to be a phoenix. How do you know it can’t be me?”