Chapter 1

I had a kindly face and a ruthless heart. The Empress Dowager herself had called me the King of Hell in the flesh.

When I was five, my hunter father was having an affair with Widow Wang next door, and my mother caught them in bed.

Terrified that their adultery would be exposed and they would be drowned as punishment, they decided to silence her for good.

One clamped a hand over my mother’s mouth so she could not cry out. The other wound a straw rope around her neck and strangled her to death.

Earlier that day, my drunken father had beaten me so badly that I hid beneath the bed until nightfall. From there, I watched them kill my mother, eight months pregnant, then hang her body from a roof beam.

Afterward, Father put on a show of reluctantly taking in the widow and her daughter, and the three of them became a new family.

My stepmother was overbearing, but I sweetly called her Mother.

My stepsister was arrogant, but I fawned over her and yielded in everything.

Even when my vicious father drove me into the cowshed so they could have my room,

I eagerly learned to use his knife and draw his bow. I followed him into the hills to hunt rabbits and into the fields to farm, flattering him with talk of how a tiger could never sire a weak daughter.

Everyone in the village said my mother had given birth to a useless, ungrateful wretch.

Kindness without power is merely weakness.

A merciful face that cannot protect its owner is nothing but helplessness.

Only I knew that behind my bodhisattva’s face, I kept a guardian’s killing blade.

Every blade I swung was for revenge.

Every bow I drew was aimed at a villain’s life.

Then, when I was ten,

my stepsister decided to sell me to a local tyrant as his lowly concubine in exchange for a handsome bride price.

I tightened my grip on my knife and meekly agreed.

Then I struck her unconscious with the hilt and sold her to the cheapest brothel in the region.

My stepmother did not learn of it until several days later.

Her eyes blazing with hatred, she tried to kill me to avenge her daughter.

I drove a knife into her chest.

She did not die.

Nor did I finish her off.

She had held my mother’s mouth shut with all her strength. So I locked the door and left her to claw across the floor like a dying dog, spending every last ounce of strength begging for someone to save her.

I knew how dearly Father loved his new family. He would never spare me.

So when he came through the gate late that night with a wild boar over his shoulder, I used the bow he had taught me to shoot and put an arrow through his throat.

Then I hugged the money jar to my chest and set fire to the entire compound.

While the whole village rushed to fight the blaze, I went to Mother’s grave and kowtowed once.

Then I turned and walked toward the capital.

For five taels of silver, I sold myself into a marquis’s household.

I became the chief maid of the family’s trueborn daughter, a young lady no one welcomed home.

Not long afterward, she entered the palace in place of the false daughter to serve the aging emperor.

Ten years of blood and storms followed.

She gave me fine clothes and rich food. I protected her dignity and kept her safe.

When the false daughter tried to destroy her reputation, I arranged for the false daughter to be caught in bed with a man.

When Consort Shen tried to disfigure her and steal the emperor’s favor, I saw to it that insects stung Consort Shen’s face beyond recognition and cost her that favor forever.

When the Noble Consort pushed her into a pond and plotted to take her life, I made sure the Noble Consort died beneath a horse’s hooves at the royal hunt.

Even when the emperor conceived the wicked notion of forcing her to accompany him in death,

I moved before the decree could be issued. I persuaded her adopted son to seize power and drive the emperor to his death.

She rose from an obscure marquis’s unwanted true daughter to the Empress Dowager, exalted above all others.

With a bodhisattva’s face and a guardian’s blade, I carved a path through enemy after enemy at her side.

Then I was granted a marriage to Xie Jingrang.

The Empress Dowager stirred her tea without looking up.

“His family declined, and only his service to the new sovereign restored him to the nobility. A man who has suffered understands the value of wealth and peace. He will not take you lightly.”

“Besides, the former crown prince destroyed his family and nearly left him to die as a beggar in the street. It was you, wearing that merciful face and tilting a bamboo-ribbed umbrella over him, who offered a hand in his darkest hour. He never forgot that kindness. That is why, when His Majesty proposed granting you a marriage, he was the first man to step forward.”

“And last, most importantly, there is no one else in the Xie family. If he betrays you, one stroke of your knife will make the entire marquis’s estate yours.”

“Jingqiu, you have crawled through enough blood and slaughter. Go enjoy a little peace and prosperity.”

I took the Empress Dowager’s advice and married Xie Jingrang.

We lived in harmony. We treated each other with respect. We had a daughter and a son. By any measure, our life was complete.

Those quiet, uneventful years gradually dulled my guardian’s blade.

Until Xie Jingrang returned from a journey south with his former beloved and her son.

Her husband had died young. Her mother-in-law was tyrannical, and her sisters-in-law vicious.

Mother and son could barely survive in that household.

She had thrown herself in front of Xie Jingrang’s horse, tearfully invoking her father’s past kindness to beg him to pull her from that sea of misery.

Xie Jingrang had spent years with blood on his blade. His heart should have been impervious to any weapon.

Yet he could not bear to leave her there.

Using his authority as Marquis of Yongning, he forced the Song family to give her a divorce letter, then brought mother and son back to the capital.

In letter after letter, he described their suffering and reminded me again and again to be generous and understanding.

I had seen every sort of creature the imperial palace could produce.

I had not done a thing, yet he was already shielding mother and son from me.

How heavily his heart tilted toward them.

I knew then that the blade gathering dust would have to leave its sheath.