Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Li Zhu had lived a life of ignominy, yet on the brink of death, she orchestrated an event that shook Luoyang to its foundations.

This act should not have gone unnoticed.

From the transport of materials into Luoyang, to the entry of mystics into the palace, and finally its execution in Jiade Hall—there were countless points along the way where the secret could have been exposed. Yet, until the very moment of impact, everything proceeded with an uncanny, unobstructed smoothness.

Empress Dowager Qin and the young Emperor Shen Fu, even in their dying breaths, could not fathom her capability for such a deed.

But Li Zhu’s actions were no spur-of-the-moment impulse.

Reflecting on her life, compared to the Yong Dynasty princesses who had once wielded immense power and commanded the winds and rains, Li Zhu, as Princess Qinghe, had endured a truly stifled existence.

Her birth mother, a former laundry maid, was elevated to empress, reigning supreme in the inner palace.

—Tragically, she succumbed to illness when Li Zhu was merely five years old.

Out of love for her mother, the emperor extended his favor to Li Zhu, bestowing upon her two commanderies as her personal fief, showering her with even greater honor and affection than her half-brother.

—Alas, in these turbulent times, even the Son of Heaven relied on powerful aristocratic clans to maintain his foothold in Luoyang. How then could she possibly act according to her own will?

Her father’s boundless affection, paradoxically, brought her endless tribulations.

The empress consort viewed her as a thorn in her side.

Her brother, Shen Fu, regarded her as a mortal enemy.

Thus, immediately upon his ascension, Shen Fu eagerly sought to send her off in a marriage alliance, intending to wed her to the fifty-year-old Wuhuan Chanyu in exchange for peace along Nan Yong’s border.

Upon hearing the news, Li Zhu was so enraged that she buried herself under her covers and wept uncontrollably.

Why?!

The corrupt nobles, who merely occupied their positions and hollowed out the very flesh and blood of the Nan Yong court—why should she be the one to mend this gaping wound?

Because she was a princess of Nan Yong?

Then why could the incompetent ministers enjoy wealth and privilege undisturbed? Why could the mediocre emperor still sit enthroned in splendor?

She refused to accept it!

Had it not been for Pei Yinzhi’s personal campaign at the border, where he repelled the North Yue army beyond the Shennü Que and resolved Nan Yong’s crisis, Li Zhu might have acted on her desperate plan for mutual destruction right then.

But it was not too late even now.

The day of her death was the third day of the eleventh month in the year Yiyou.

It was the third anniversary of the death of her husband, Pei Yinzhi, and also his memorial day.

The North Yue army, which had once not dared to set foot beyond the Shennü Que, had now advanced at an unstoppable pace to the gates of Luoyang.

Amid the snow and wind, Shen Fu, clutching the imperial jade seal, surrendered at the Duangate of the Southern Palace, trading the entire Nan Yong empire for the title of a feudal prince.

The Emperor of North Yue was overjoyed. After accepting the jade seal, he inquired about the whereabouts of Princess Qinghe.

The officials knelt in the snow, a collective silence, none daring to speak.

Everyone knew that if Li Zhu fell into his hands, she would face a grim fate.

Because her second husband was Pei Yinzhi.

The Pei clan of Yiling, whose ancestors had once served as Yiling Governor, had been officials for generations. After several dynastic changes, the family had long declined into humble commoners, until, as if their ancestors' graves had emitted auspicious smoke, they produced a Pei Yinzhi.

Though a civil official, he ventured to the frontier three times in his life.

The first time, he shattered North Yue’s dream of crossing south and married Princess Qinghe.

The second time, he captured three northern cities and annihilated thirty thousand Wuhuan troops allied with North Yue.

The third time, with forty thousand soldiers, he decisively defeated a hundred thousand troops of North Yue. Then, leading fifty elite cavalrymen, he pursued them deep into the northern territories, startling a North Yue general who thought he had escaped with his life, causing him to tumble from his horse in panic and die on the spot.

If not for Pei Yinzhi’s old illness flaring up again at that time, leading to his untimely death, the eleven northern provinces would have been almost within easy reach.

How could the Emperor of North Yue not fear and hate him?

Even though Pei Yinzhi was dead, his wife still lived. How could the emperor let her go easily?

Li Zhu was well aware of this.

So she did not flee.

Yet she never expected that, before meeting the Emperor of North Yue, she would first encounter her ex-husband, Tan Xun, the nephew of Empress Dowager Qin.

-

“The rebel forces are about to enter the city, Li Zhu. Come with me. As long as I draw breath, I will not let you be humiliated.”

Outside the Jiade Hall, the muffled sobs and weeping of the officials echoed.

Inside the hall, empty and quiet, the woman sitting before the desk grinding ink paused at the sound and looked up.

Standing before Li Zhu was a tall, refined nobleman.

He had clearly come in a hurry, his hair slightly disheveled, yet he stood in the hall with the solemn grace of wind through pines, possessing an aura that transcended the mundane world—exactly the demeanor expected of a renowned scion of the Tan family, celebrated across six dynasties.

But seeing him now and hearing his words, Li Zhu felt not moved, but a profound sense of absurdity.

“You come to me now with these words?”

Li Zhu set down her brush, her clear, dark eyes fixed on him. After a moment, she said:

“Tan Yuhui, have you forgotten why we divorced in the first place?”

She had married him at seventeen.

The marriage was not what she wanted, but she and Tan Xun had known each other since childhood. Their union was, first, a matter of political necessity, and second, because Tan Xun was, at the time, considered a good match.

After marriage, they were not passionately in love, but they treated each other with respect.

Li Zhu had never acted like a privileged princess towards him, and as a wife, she had never been remiss in her duties.

Later, when Empress Dowager Qin restricted access to the princess’s residence, and her mother-in-law, relying on Empress Dowager Qin’s authority, often treated her disrespectfully, Li Zhu never took out her anger on him.

And what did Tan Xun do?

In the second year of their marriage, he fell in love with someone else and even proposed taking a concubine!

He had humiliated her to such an extent; how dared he speak such high-sounding words today?

“I certainly haven’t forgotten!”

Tan Xun stepped forward and clamped down on her wrist, his voice urgent as he explained:

“Our divorce was all due to Pei Yinzhi’s scheming—he tore you away from me. How could I forget? Li Zhu, time is short. I’ll explain everything to you later, but now you must come with me!”

What was he saying?

Outside the hall, the wailing wind and mournful sounds beat against the door.

Li Zhu looked puzzled, then quickly grew angry:

“Let go of me! What right do you have to take me away? Even if you could help me flee Luoyang today, where could we possibly go? The world is about to belong to the North Yue—do you think there’s still a place for me?”

“Today marks the end of the Nan Yong court, and it should also be the end of the Nan Yong princess. I will not flee. If my husband were here, he wouldn’t flee either. Tan Xun, you and I were brought together by a twist of fate—an ill-fated relationship from the start. We were never meant to walk the same path. Don’t throw your life away for me. Just go!”

Tan Xun shuddered.

Seizing the moment he was stunned, Li Zhu fiercely kicked him.

Tan Xun wasn’t knocked down, but he stumbled and overturned a nearby candlestand.

Lamp oil spilled across the stone bricks, and a small sea of flames erupted, instantly igniting a scroll of memorial text Li Zhu had just finished writing.

Watching the ashes scatter, Tan Xun’s face suddenly darkened with anger.

“Li Zhu, do you think you and Pei Yinzhi were meant to walk the same path? Do you think he ever showed you his true face?”

He abruptly gripped Li Zhu’s shoulders, his eyes flaming red:

“You don’t understand him at all. You’ve never seen his wolflike ambition or his ruthless nature! Li Zhu, you’re too naive. You have no idea how many dirty tricks someone of his background used to get to you! You don’t even know that he wasn’t even—”

Outside the hall, the sound of measured footsteps echoed from the long staircase.

The North Yue forces were drawing near.

“I won’t believe a single word that comes from your mouth.”

The princess with disheveled hair held back her tears, her eyes brighter than the flames.

“But since you speak with such conviction, come with me to the underworld. We’ll face him and sort it out there.”

Tan Xun’s eyebrows twitched.

An acrid smell grew stronger in the air, and a sense of foreboding spread through Tan Xun’s heart.

Just as the main door of Jiade Palace was kicked open—

Boom—!!!

The North Yue Emperor, who stood at the forefront, along with his guards behind him, and at the rear, Emperor Xining and Empress Dowager Qin, were all caught in the blast.

The great hall collapsed, flames shooting toward the sky.

Heroes and gentlemen, emperors and empress dowagers—all were buried in the thunderous blast of the explosion.

Buried by the hands of a princess they had dismissed as weak.

-

Niter and sulfur were smells Li Zhu had been most familiar with since childhood.

When she was young, many Daoist priests frequented the palace. They offered Emperor Mingzhao elixirs, deceiving him into believing that consuming them would grant him immortality and reunite him with the late empress in the heavenly capital, where they could live together forever.

Li Zhu never believed it, but now, amid the smoke and fire, she seemed to see the figures of those from her past.

……

“Princess, the night is late. I can return to my residence to change.”

“Princess need not worry. As long as the blood of the warriors before the Divine Maiden’s Gate remains warm, we will never entrust the fate of the nation to the whims of women.”

“It is a subject’s duty to shoulder the court's burdens. No reward is necessary. If His Majesty insists on granting favors, then let it be according to the laws of the Yong Dynasty: confer upon your elder sister the title of Grand Princess.”

……

In her dying moments, Li Zhu felt no pain, only exhaustion.

The freest time of Li Zhu’s life had been the mere three years of her marriage to Pei Yinzhi.

Since his death, every day had been exhausting.

Even now, with her enemies slain and revenge taken, she felt only momentary satisfaction. Once that faded, only emptiness remained.

She wanted to get some proper sleep.

The bamboo slips covered in memorial texts turned to ashes, scattering through the sky above Luoyang.

“You died for my sake, for whom should I live on alone?”

“If you ever cherished me, open the coffin for me.”

As she closed her eyes, the smell of niter and sulfur began to fade.

Instead, the scent of imperial incense mixed in, growing stronger, bringing back many childhood memories for Li Zhu.

This was the incense her father had most often used when he was still alive.

Her father, the fifteenth emperor of the Yong Dynasty.

For eight years after ascending the throne, he was a sage ruler. But in the ninth year, he suddenly took a downward spiral—seeking immortality, favoring eunuchs and sycophants, and never turning back on his path to becoming a tyrant.

When she was ten, Li Zhu, having just learned to write memorials, filled two bamboo slips with her advice.

She stormed in and presented them to Emperor Mingzhao, railing against the court’s reliance on eunuchs.

He only ruffled her hair, smiling as he praised her calligraphy for resembling her grandfather’s, saying she would surely become a master calligrapher someday.

To this day, Emperor Mingzhao still treated Li Zhu’s advice as the childish prattle of a child, never taking them seriously.

He was not a wise ruler.

But perhaps he was a father who truly loved his daughter.

……But Jiade Palace was destroyed, and her father had been dead for years. How could she suddenly smell this scent at the moment of her death?!

Li Zhu’s eyes snapped open.

“—Lin'er, what are you doing here? Have you finally forgiven your father? Are you not mad anymore with those Daoists?”

There was no collapsed rubble.

No niter or sulfur, no clatter of arms.

The Jade Hall was filled with the warm fragrance of incense.

Before her stood a man nearing forty, barefoot with his robes open, wearing a dark lotus crown. He looked less like an emperor and more like a celestial Taoist priest.

Emperor Mingzhao smiled and beckoned her over.

"Your father has already ordered those Taoist masters to revise the alchemical formula. They will no longer draw blood monthly to refine elixirs. Now, you should... my Liner, why are you still crying?"

Li Zhu stared blankly at the person before her, as if in a dream.

But this was no dream.

If her memory served her correctly, the practice of drawing blood for alchemy was from the nineteenth year of Mingzhao's reign.

It was no trivial affair. She had a huge argument with Emperor Mingzhao over it, and it sparked many disputes. Li Zhu remembered it vividly.

This year, she was sixteen.

Li Zhu gazed out from the doorway of the Jade Hall, her eyes passing over the Jiade Hall and the Duan Gate, settling on the Twenty-Four Streets bathed in the clear sky.

The city of Luoyang had long enjoyed peace, its people unfamiliar with warfare.

No one but her knew that eleven years later, Nan Yong would fall.

Suddenly, Li Zhu came to her senses.

She should not stay here.

She needed to go to Yiling Commandery to meet Pei Yinzhi, who was only nineteen at the time.