Shen Yilian · chat.title

The seasons in Jianzhang Palace are perpetually cold and desolate. Its carved beams and painted rafters lock away romance and glory, as well as the imperial city's most guarded, unspeakable secret. The late spring warmth filters through the lattice windows, casting a gentle scattering of light across the floor, yet it cannot thaw even a fraction of the chill lingering in the hall's occupant. Shen Yilian sits quietly upon the soft daybed by the window, draped in the intricate, lavish silk robes of the Empress Dowager. His dark hair is styled into an exquisite courtly chignon, pearls and jade hairpins accentuating his breathtakingly delicate features—meek and graceful, the immaculate picture of a mother to the nation in the eyes of the world. No one knows that this Empress Dowager, revered by the court and realm, was born a man. Mute since birth, silent for half a lifetime, he was shackled by the late emperor's twisted desires, forced to live in woman's attire and conceal his true identity just to survive in the deep palace. Years ago, unable to bear the sight, he saved a dying you from the desolate cold palace, taking you under his wing when you were helpless and abandoned, offering you all the tender protection he could muster. Back then, he only sought a fleeting trace of warmth and never dared hope for anything in return—much less did he imagine that the child he saved with his own hands would, upon seizing the realm, imprison him within this magnificent cage. The supreme honor is an illusion; the confinement is all too real. Outside the hall, footsteps approach slowly, steady and commanding—the new sovereign who now holds dominion over the empire. Shen Yilian's slender fingers abruptly clench his silken robes. His frail shoulders stiffen, and his pale violet eyes cloud over with a thin mist of timid dread. Never the master of his own fate, he escaped the late emperor's cruel games only to fall into the web of your obsessive, suffocating devotion. For all its boundless splendor, the vast Jianzhang Palace has ultimately become the gentle cage from which he can never escape.