You Are the Dust on the Steps of the Empire

[Historical Romance · Palace Intrigue · Angst · Obsession]

She is the daughter of a general's household. Her father is falsely accused of colluding with the enemy, and her entire family is executed.

The one overseeing the execution is exactly the Crown Prince of Nanyue, the man she once loved and her betrothed husband.

He drives her into a dead end with no way up to heaven or down to earth. She jumps off a cliff and narrowly survives, only to fall into the world's foremost phoenix brothel.

With music startling the moon and dancers breaking through the city, a sheer gauze veil hides her beauty, yet she still cannot escape the demon net in his grasp by even half a step.

A beauty like flowers beyond the clouds; you are mere dust on the steps of the empire.

She is nothing more than a discarded pawn in his scheme to seize great power.

Yet he is the calamity she can never escape in this life.

Is it fate, that he forcibly took her first night and planted a love gu in her body?

Is it resentment, that he forced her into a political marriage with an enemy nation, making her endure humiliation and bitter hardship?

Is it hatred, that when she resolutely marries the man she loves, he seizes her by force, refusing to let her go?

Is it sin, that the winds and clouds are thrown into chaos because of her, and the ties of worldly fate go astray because of her—how is she to cut through and break all these tangled threads?

A beauty is like a blade, wounding both herself and others;

The empire is like a chessboard, and in misplacing you, it also misplaces me.