Tragic Past

Not long after I married the crown prince, he was deposed.

We spent ten years imprisoned together in a derelict garden.

I tilled the soil and planted vegetables, doing everything I could to stay alive.

Half out of his mind, he kicked my vegetables to pieces, muttering, “Thank goodness it isn’t Qianyi locked up in here.”

Qianyi was the cousin who had come to live with my family.

She was now Prince Cheng’s consort.

I had never known the deposed crown prince had feelings for her.

His ravings made a mockery of the ten years I had spent at his side.

Later, Prince Cheng ascended the throne and issued two decrees.

One sentenced the deposed crown prince to death by poisoned wine.

The other sent me to cultivate the Way in a Taoist temple.

I became Master Taihui of Purple Cloud Temple.

Less than two years later, I became the new emperor’s Consort Yu.

People sneered at my wiles, saying I had bewitched the emperor so thoroughly that he neglected even his lawful wife.

My cousin demanded bitterly to know why I had stolen her husband, why I had not followed the deposed crown prince to the grave.

The new emperor hated me too.

He hated me because, years before, I had seen him wounded and left him there to attend the consort selection.

His grave injuries had failed to heal.

He had lost his chance and spent years scheming before he finally won the throne.

Yet later, when a deadly poison left me confined to my sickbed, he cast aside his entire harem and used blood drawn from his own heart to save me.

As I lay dying, he held me and wept in anguish.

“As long as you live, I’ll agree to anything.”

“I’ll make you empress.”

“I’ll let your parents come back to the capital.”

“Your brother, your sister-in-law, your nephew—all of them.”

“Only live.”

Tears blurred my sight.

I did not even have the strength to cry.

Too late.

Why couldn’t he have granted my wish sooner?

Why had he made my whole life so miserable?

Then I was given another life.

Mother told me joyfully that the empress had specifically summoned me to the consort-selection banquet.

I looked at my cousin, who could hardly contain her eagerness, then lowered my eyes and said softly, “I don’t want to go.”

I was a condemned slave, due to be beheaded in the autumn.

To buy myself a little more time, I decided to get pregnant.

I set my sights on the cold, aloof jailer.

With my slender waist and full hips, I tried every trick I knew to seduce him.

At first he scorned me.

Once he’d had a taste, he came back night after night, unwilling to let me go.

The day a physician confirmed my pregnancy, a curtained sedan chair was carried into the dungeon.

As they helped me inside, I still had no idea what was happening.

“What is this for?”

The warden beamed at me.

“Miss Liu, you’re carrying His Grace’s child.

They’ve come to take you home to a life of comfort.”

The father of my child knelt before me, begging the Empress Dowager to grant him the favor of marrying the woman he loved.

My nails nearly broke the skin of my palms, yet I smiled and asked who had won his heart.

He said Zeng Zi’an, Grand Secretary Zeng’s only daughter, was the love of his life.

But Zeng Zi’an no longer existed.

All that remained was me, consumed by the hunger for power, looking down upon the world.

There was a sorceress in the capital.

Every wish made to her came true.

But her price was steep.

One life for one wish.

I went to her door.

In exchange for my life, I wanted every member of my husband’s family to die a wretched death.

The sorceress was so beautiful and ethereal she might have been an immortal.

Only the crimson dot between her brows carried a hint of menace.

She told me, “Go home and wait seven days.

In seven days, I promise you, not even a dog or chicken in his household will remain alive.”

A merchant had been away for three years without returning home.

Everyone said he had fallen for someone else and set up a mistress in another town.

His wife refused to believe it.

On New Year’s Eve, she stood beside the road with a bronze mirror in her arms, listening to the words of wandering souls.

When she learned where her husband was, she set out alone to find him.

A year later, their daughter Yihe received a letter from her mother.

The letter assured her that all was well.

But Yihe knew her mother was in danger.

To uncover the truth, she followed her mother’s example and took up a mirror to seek an answer.

After a long wait, a wandering soul’s face appeared in the glass.

Slowly, it spoke: “The Son of Heaven is lighting the Everlasting Lamp.

“Human bones are its wick.

Human flesh is its oil.

“While the lamp burns without end, its master cannot die.

“Thus may the Son of Heaven live forever.

“Your father has already been rendered into lamp oil.

As for your mother…

“She is to be the emperor’s new empress.”

My mother was exquisitely beautiful.

But during the years my father studied abroad, another man kept her in his power and abused her.

On the day Father returned, he stumbled upon what was happening.

I thought he would be horrified.

Furious.

Instead, he merely closed the bedroom door.

And heartlessly shut my mother inside with her humiliation and her tears.

Pei Xu was the Chancellor’s son.

On a wager, he disguised himself as a poor young man and set out to win me over.

Instead, he fell deeply in love with me and swore he would marry no one else.

When his sister learned of it, she had my younger brother and sister killed, then sold me to a brothel to put an end to my presumptuous dreams.

Years later, she was to marry the young marquis.

But on their wedding day, he never came to fetch his bride.

Dressed in his wedding robes, he was at a brothel, spending a fortune on me.

I was a flower Shen Yan had planted.

He tended me lovingly for years, and I finally took human form the year he killed the emperor and claimed the throne.

One night, I slipped into his bedchamber and lay down beside him, only for him to seize me by the throat.

I looked at him pitifully.

“But this is how I always used to sleep.”

Four years ago, Gu Jinzhi, the Crown Prince of the Beijing Circle, fell in love with me at first sight.

After three years of relentless pursuit, I finally gave in.

In the first year of our relationship, he started pestering me to get married.

I was hesitant, but I couldn’t withstand his endless coaxing.

In the end, I brought him home to meet my parents.

But that day, outside the private room, I heard one of his buddies ask him, “You’ve met her parents now. When’s the wedding?”

Gu Jinzhi clicked his tongue and said unhurriedly, “All of a sudden, I don’t want to get married that much anymore.”

Someone beside him jeered, “Oh, stop pretending. You spent three years chasing that untouchable ice queen. You’d really give her up?”

“Ice queen?”

I heard him let out a scoff.

“If you saw how her parents treat her, you’d feel the same way I do.”

“The same how?”

“That she’s nothing special after all.”

Every day, Noble Lady Zhao Wan forgets one more memory of the emperor who once promised never to fail her.

When she remembers only the gentle husband of her youth, the white-haired ruler who betrayed her must watch her defend the man he used to be.

But as a palace purge restores the truth, love, ambition, and wounds too deep to forgive drive their reunion toward a final tragedy.