A Feast for All Under Heaven

At the edge of power, ghosts look down from on high. Divination stalks the future; board games plot the course ahead. Every known path leads to ruin. Duty is forced to seek balance amid contradictions. One must burn the withered grass one planted, then bind oneself to the splendor of old Houting. Upon the warp and weft, who casts the dice?

In the twenty-second year of the Yuding era of the Northern Dynasty, Chu Lingzhao took office as leader of the Lingyin faction. At the time, the two southeastern nations beyond the realm were poised to strike, while within the realm, the provinces and the surviving marquises had long been at odds. Above the provinces, the Lingyin and Lingyang factions stood in opposition. Foreign powers set up agents to wage proxy struggles within the realm, steadily cultivating corruption. The regime teetered on the brink of collapse, and dark clouds gathered before the storm. She had to fulfill the duties of a faction leader and a ruler alike, pursuing stability and reform together. Stability had to be maintained even as change was pursued through dangerous measures. Expanding the territory was necessary to shift the costs elsewhere. Ideological harm had been quietly cultivated within the borders for years. Old nobility and foreign peoples sought to blend and coexist even as they despised one another. Though the realm was riddled with deep-rooted ills and in utter disarray, she still had to fulfill her duty: force political compromise under immense pressure, maintain a dynamic balance amid fragile stability, strike from the shadows beneath a calm surface, control the situation as many powers rose in parallel, and advance unification by bringing allies together.

Was unifying the realm the goal? Her ambitions went far beyond that. The times simply needed an excuse, a justification, and a grand vision. And she would mend the fractured political order from within.

{Period flavor. A female lead and an ensemble cast amid troubled times}

A sweeping tale of a fated empress and the many brilliant minds who shape the course of a chaotic age.

There is no romance in this book. The story focuses on the ensemble cast apart from the female lead.