The once-abandoned Cold Palace had been transformed into Xianlan's private zither rehearsal room.
No one knew why she chose to return to such an ominous place—
but she knew.
"If I'm to reclaim everything… then I must begin where they believed I'd never return."
The soft resonance of zither strings filled the air one morning
when a quiet figure appeared at the door.
Jiang Xinluo, dressed in pale green, stepped in gracefully.
"The song you're playing…"
"My mother used to play it when she was alive."
Xianlan lifted her fingers from the strings and looked up to meet her eyes.
"Then you must know the tune 'Swan Soars Westward.'"
Jiang Xinluo nodded.
"But I've only just learned… the true composer wasn't my mother."
"It was Consort Yifei— your mother."
The wind brushed the ends of their hair,
as the silence between two former enemies gave way to another truth.
"I'm beginning to question… who it was that wrote the story I've believed my whole life,"
Jiang Xinluo murmured.
⸻
That night, she returned to her chambers with a volume of royal history.
Its early pages accused Consort Yifei of "foreign collusion" and "inciting high-ranking ministers."
But the word "collusion" had been scratched out and replaced,
and "inciting" had been redacted with fresh ink.
"The ancient letters… the vanished paintings… her poetry…"
"If I believe all of it—then I'll have to stop believing in everything I thought I knew."
In the midst of that inner turmoil,
a voice from her childhood resurfaced—
her mother's words:
"Never trust a woman who cries in silence… for she's likely threading a poisoned needle beneath her sleeve."
⸻
Jiang Xinluo began to move her pieces.
She volunteered to attend a prayer ceremony with Noble Consort Gui—observing rather than participating.
And what she witnessed that day…
was one of the consort's maids slipping something into a scroll of scripture, hiding it beneath the altar's candle base.
"A letter… or an order?"
That same night,
Xianlan secretly entered the fabric storage room of the inner palace,
with Wen Yichen providing a distraction elsewhere.
She discovered a piece of embroidery—Twin Swans Under the Moon—
once belonging to her mother,
long believed lost after her alleged affair.
"It shouldn't be here… unless someone kept it as 'evidence'—waiting for the right day to use it."
⸻
In a hidden chamber of the imperial palace,
Feng Yuhan reviewed a report from spies he'd dispatched to the Jianrong Kingdom.
"There's a letter…"
"Written by Jiang Xinluo to the Wen family in the Li Palace."
"The content remains unclear, but we know one thing—she's beginning to question her allegiance."
Feng Yuhan sat silent for a moment,
then spoke decisively:
"She's still dangerous… but that's precisely what makes her interesting."
⸻
That night,
Xianlan lit a candle in her chamber.
Above her desk hung the painting of her mother, recently recovered from the Grand Archives.
She etched her thoughts onto a small wooden tablet,
writing with her own hand:
"If Mother died for a crime she never committed, I will restore her honor."
"And if that truth must be paid for with hatred, so be it."
The wind howled, making the flame tremble—
but her gaze remained still, cold,
and unwavering.