A Phoenix Forged From Broken Bones

On the snowiest day in Longzhong, Lu Jiuyao died in the mouths of refugees. Driven mad with hunger, they gnawed at her flesh and tore at her limbs...

She was the only daughter of a military family, a disciple of Daoist Qingyun, skilled with sword and spear, able to draw talismans and brew medicine, play the qin and paint. She was the finest young woman in all of Longzhong.

That day, the Crown Prince led an army into battle, and the entire marquis's estate was lost in the rolling yellow dust at Hanyang Pass. Lu Jiuyao sacrificed half her face and risked her life to escort him back to the capital, because he had promised that once he ascended the throne, she would be empress, the mother of the realm.

But afterward, the emperor spent his nights in song and dance, lost in the pleasures of the inner chambers, while she was cast into the Cold Palace. A lonely lamp and the bleak autumn wind gnawed away at what little reason she had left.

Every member of the Lu Ping Marquis household, a family of military men, had been nothing more than a stepping stone on his road to power. All he said was,