1 Prologue: Remembering

Do you still remember when we first meet? I do. It was near the end of summer. I remember how at that time I was still young and innocent, believing in honesty and justice. I had not yet realised the only way to survive in this world was through cruelty and deception. Thinking of those times now makes me laugh in humiliation of my prior self.

You weren't innocent of course. You were the emperor of all under heaven. You had been taught the art of cruelty since before you could walk.

We were in my father's mansion and you were standing under a plum tree reciting poetry to my father. I was froze at the sight of you. You were so handsome. You smiled at me and chuckled at my bewildered expression. My father was so angry and punished me to kneel infront of our ancestral temple for 2 shichen. In the end my legs hurt so much I could barely walk and had to be carried back my room. But I didn't care. I was in love!

Could you really blame me? Your five facial features were all excellent. They belonged more to an immortal than a mere mortal. Your skin was as white and smooth as the finest jade. Your smile could make the coldest hearts melt. When you were with me it was as though only I mattered in the whole world. Me and only me. A clear difference to my home where it was my brothers who mattered to my mother and work to my father.

So when the time came for you to choose a bride, I begged my father to let me enter the concubine selections. The gaze my father gave me was full of pity and sadness.

"Ruyi" he had said "At your age, it is natural to think of the palace as full of wonder and beauty. That no other place has an equal amount of beauty. But outside those red walls there are places that dwarf the palace. Great towers that have stood for hundreds of years and valleys the color of rainbows. After being in the palace for a while you will come to despise it." At the time I was too young to truly understand what he wanted. If only I had listened to my father then. But I didn't and forced him to let me enter the selections.

I had thought, that with my beauty which eclipsed the moon, my virtues which had been praised by the Empress Dowager herself and my position as your teachers daughter and right chancellors niece, I could easily become the mother of the world. I had been wrong. That position went to Yang Nuying and I became Imperial Concubine Xian instead. I was still happy though. After all those years I was finally with you, the man I had loved for over 5 years.

To make you happy, I learned to read your moods, feelings and whims. All the things you liked, I learned for you. Everything you wanted, I gave you. And so for a time we were happy. I was your most favoured consort and had a good relationship with the Empress. Even Mu Jinyan, that lowly rat, was a person I adored and considered my sister.

Soon, to both our happiness, I became pregnant. We weren't the only ones happy. The Empress was too. She sent me a tonic every day which was supposed to help my child grow strong and healthy in my womb. I could not think of a reason she would wish to harm me, you see i was very naive. So I drank it all in joy. Oh, how gullible I used to be.

The tonic was poison. The child, who we named Xiulan, was born weak and sickly. She died only a couple of months after her birth. Her death was blamed on the fact I has always had a not so healthy constitution so you said "Oh well" and conferred her Princess Shaoying of the First Rank. It was only a year later, when the empress herself was pregnant, that I learned the truth.

The Empress, together with my sworn sister Mu Jinyan, had poisoned me and killed Xiulan, as they feared the Emperors love for me. Naturally I swore revenge on them both. I poisoned the Empress after she gave birth and together with a nursemaid framed Mu Jinyan. And so I became the inner court's only women.

After the mourning period for the witch was over, it was decided you needed a new empress and more concubines. This time I decided to be cruel. To make sure no one could harm me ever again. This time I will be the one with power.

This is the story of my ambition to become the golden phoenix.