My father, the emperor, once traveled through Jiangnan in disguise and encountered a diviner.
The man exposed his identity at a glance and left him with a prophecy: ‘The one who will plunge my realm into chaos stands even now at Your Majesty’s side.’
Even after my father ordered him beaten to death, he refused to name the traitor.
And so my mother, the most favored consort in the Six Palaces, was given a bowl of arsenic by that brutal, suspicious emperor.
After her death, he ordered her hair draped over her face and her mouth stuffed with rice chaff, so that even her ghost would be too ashamed to face anyone and unable to speak.
All because she had been the only person beside him that day.
But there was one thing my father did not know.
At nine years old, hidden behind a curtain, I had heard everything too.
