Weaving Fate, Commanding Heaven: The Mountains and Rivers Cauldron Teaches Me to Be a Queen

The night Shen Zhao was nailed into a coffin and thrown into the pond, a red star fell into her eyes.

From then on, dry bones could speak, and the human heart became an illustrated guide:

[Guard A: Greedy and afraid of ghosts, old injury in his left knee]

[Stepmother: Fears Buddhist verses, secretly poisoned her husband to death]

She rises by consuming "emotional entropy": saving people earns her prestige, killing them adds to her karmic debt.

When refugees become her blades,

when the bones of powerful clans pave her ladder to heaven,

the spirit of the Nine Cauldrons of Mountains and Rivers laughs coldly inside her mind:

"Use up three hundred lives, and you will become my new vessel."

Later, blood floods the Golden Throne Hall.

She severs the Crown Prince's fate, marked by a purple-gold dragon,

and grafts the concept of plague onto the dragon veins:

"You wretched emperor, it's time you tasted the calamity you created."

On the day she ascends the throne, she melts down the Nine Cauldrons to forge a Sun-and-Moon Terrace.

The white-haired empress's crimson pupils are like blood:

"From this day on, rulers shall stand here, where all the people can look directly upon those in power."

This realm, in the end, is the hunting ground of ants.