Beneath the Phoenix’s Wing Lies a Hidden Thorn

The Cold Palace, once left to rot like the husk of a haunted soul, now echoed faintly with the breath of a guqin its melody a whisper of hope long forgotten.

The thick dust that once blanketed the aged wooden doors had been disturbed by small footprints, replaced by the soft fragrance of essential oils which Xianlan had begun to light in the far corner of the room where once only cobwebs and the cracks beneath the altar stone remained.

Though the chamber was wide and cloaked in gloom, it no longer felt empty. Instead, it invited stillness one that distilled thought and memory into clarity. Morning sunlight filtered through faded paper windows, casting narrow beams across the floor, striking the edge of a seven-string zither and painting shadows in the shape of outstretched phoenix wings across broken tiles.

Xianlan sat at the heart of the room.

Her long, slender fingers brushed gently against the strings, the notes falling like whispers of wind threading through the treetops at winter's end. Every phrase seemed to carry an unspoken message a voice from someone who no longer had the chance to speak for themselves.

Though it was morning, a chill breeze swept through the air, soft enough to stir the tips of her dark hair. Strands brushed against her bare shoulders. She wore no crown, no ornament to signify her status. Only a simple cream-colored robe of soft silk, embroidered by hand with the pattern of plum blossoms.

This palace had once stood as a symbol of exile and death.

But now, she was awakening it turning it into a place of beginnings.

The melody drifted on.

Until the sound of soft, even footsteps broke the quiet along the corridor outside.

Still, Xianlan did not stop playing.

Not until a silhouette emerged silently in the doorway.

"The song you're playing…"

A gentle voice rose, careful not to disturb the notes that lingered.

A woman in pale green robes appeared Jiang Xinluo. She stood still, her gaze struggling to remain composed, though the shimmer in her eyes betrayed the tremor within.

Xianlan lifted her head slowly, withdrawing her hand from the strings.

The last note hovered in the air suspended for a breath then faded.

She looked at the visitor with calm, unshaken eyes.

"So, you know Flight of the Phoenix to the Western Sun," she said quietly.

Jiang Xinluo stepped forward, her eyes drifting to the guqin, then meeting Xianlan's.

Her deep green irises caught the flicker of candlelight, dimmed by something sorrowful.

"My mother used to play it at night…" she murmured.

"She once told me it was an old tune, composed by a woman who was forgotten."

A pause.

Her smile this time was neither mocking nor triumphant but something quieter, gentler.

"But now I realize… the true composer was not my mother."

Xianlan remained silent, allowing her to finish.

Jiang Xinluo inhaled softly.

"…It was Consort Yi Fei your mother."

At those words, the sunlight through the windows seemed to brighten for a moment.

Not because the light had changed but because the truth had swept away the veils of deceit that once covered the past.

Another gust of winter air drifted through the palace.

The hem of Jiang Xinluo's robe fluttered. The delicate scent of yulan blossoms that clung to her faded gently into the stillness.

Xianlan studied her in silence, then spoke, her voice calm and clear.

"This was the last song my mother ever played… before she was condemned as disloyal."

"Not even a single note of the guqin was allowed to mourn her at her funeral."

Jiang Xinluo said nothing for a long time. Her eyes quivered faintly.

She had never known how deep the other woman's grief ran.

"…I'm starting to wonder who it was that wrote the history I've believed all my life," she said quietly not gently, but as one who had just awakened from a long and fragile dream.

Xianlan met her gaze directly.

"You still have the chance to correct what was misunderstood…

Unlike me, who never got to hold her mother one last time."

Her voice was not harsh.

But within its softness lay a silence louder than any cry.

Jiang Xinluo looked away.

Her delicate hand clenched the edge of her sleeve without realizing.

"I was raised to be loyal to duty… But now I don't know who that duty was truly for."

"Perhaps… the silence of the dead speaks truth louder than an army ever could."

Xianlan did not respond.

She only reached for the strings again, pressing the first few notes of the melody once more.

"If one day… you choose to listen to the voices of the departed"

The guqin's voice rose again, gently this time.

"…you may come to hear more than you ever knew."

⸻

That Same Night - Jiang Xinluo's Quiet Residence

The night wind howled, sending the front curtains of the residence into fits of restless flapping.

A solitary lantern by the window flickered with each gust, casting the shadow of a lone woman wavering and stretched across the wooden floor.

Jiang Xinluo sat alone in her study.

Before her sat a porcelain teacup, its contents long grown cold, and a pile of old tomes she had pulled from the lowest shelf of her personal cabinet.

Her slender hand turned the brittle pages with intense focus.

In the wavering lamplight, her sharp eyes reflected a rare uncertainty a hesitation never seen before.

One of the books was titled "Imperial Court Records Year 9 of the Fenglong Era."

She remembered receiving this volume at the age of thirteen, a gift from an envoy official who claimed it held the "authentic history."

The very first page bore a familiar line:

"Consort Yi Fei conspired with enemy states and incited dissent within the inner court.

A woman of beauty, masking a mind of thorns."

Xinluo stared at the words for a long time.

But then… she began to see something she had never noticed before.

Some characters had been erased and rewritten.

The ink, once dark and authoritative, had begun to fade, revealing ghostly remnants beneath.

The phrase "incited dissent" was originally "offered counsel."

"Conspired" had been written over "petitioned reform to treaty policies."

She froze.

"…If I believe everything I was taught, then I can no longer believe myself."

Suddenly, a voice surfaced in her mind a memory of her mother, who had died when she was still a child.

Back then, her words had sounded like bedtime tales…

Now, they cut like blades.

"Never trust a woman who weeps in silence…

For she is most likely threading poisoned needles beneath her sleeves."

Xinluo placed her hand over the record.

Her palm was icy cold yet inside her chest, fire surged like molten lava.

She closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath…

Then slowly opened them, her gaze hardening into resolve.

"If I am but a pawn on their board… then perhaps it's time to turn the board over."

⸻

The Next Morning - The Grand Temple

Chanting resounded through the vast halls of the Grand Temple.

The scent of incense was thick and stifling, curling into the air beneath layers of golden drapes that shimmered with sunlight streaming through panes of crystal jade.

Jiang Xinluo walked in silence, her steps light beside Noble Consort Su.

She wore a robe of pale green silk, her face adorned with a familiar, soft smile the face of a dutiful lady.

But behind those calm eyes lurked a silent radar, sweeping for movement, measuring every glance.

Then, in that quiet moment

Her gaze flicked toward one of the consort's servants.

The same servant who always lingered at the back, quiet and unseen.

That woman kept her head low, as expected.

But something was off her wrist was oddly tucked into her sleeve, almost too carefully.

And then

With a furtive motion, the maid slipped something beneath the base of a candleholder in the shadows of the temple's corner.

Xinluo turned her face away, pretending not to notice.

But inside her heart pounded.

"An order? Or a letter?

And if it's a letter… to whom is it addressed?"

⸻

That Same Night - Palace Storage Hall

A figure moved soundlessly beneath the moonlight.

Wen Yuchen leaned against a wooden pillar in the courtyard's shadow,

like a man out for midnight tea.

But in truth, he was there to shield prying eyes…

and buy precious time for someone else.

Inside the storage hall, Xianlan crept soundlessly.

She grasped a small oil lamp and bent down, carefully opening a chest hidden behind stacks of folded cotton cloth.

Within it lay a bolt of soft red silk embroidered with the image of "Twin Phoenixes beneath the Moon."

It was a pattern that Consort Yi Fei had used exclusively for her private quarters.

"This cloth… should never have ended up here unless someone deliberately kept it,

waiting for the right moment… to use it as evidence."

Xianlan gently stroked the embroidery.

Her fingers traced the threads her mother had once sewn by hand line by line… stitch by stitch.

In her eyes, a new light ignited.

Not the glimmer of sorrow

but a fire

A fire of truth seeking to be known.

⸻

A Secret Room Within the Crown Prince's Palace - Just Past Midnight

The sound of water dripping from a jade vessel echoed through the silence.

This was the hidden council chamber, nestled deep within the Crown Prince's residence.

The walls, lacquered in aged black wood, bore faint carvings of golden dragons now almost faded by the passage of time.

Soft lamplight from the wall sconces danced across the golden-black robes of the man standing by the long table.

Feng Yuhan leaned casually against the lacquered surface, a thin letter held loosely in one hand.

The seal marked it as a dispatch from the Kingdom of Jianrong.

Footsteps approached light, precise.

His most trusted shadow guard bowed low and whispered the report:

"Yes, my lord. The latest correspondence from Jianrong confirms…

Jiang Xinluo has contacted the Wen family of the Li court.

But rather than requesting intelligence on Nanyan…

She inquired about archived records related to Consort Yi Fei."

Feng Yuhan arched a brow.

"…She's retracing the past?"

His voice was low cool and composed, like the surface of a winter pond.

The guard nodded slowly, then added:

"We believe… she has begun to doubt those who sent her."

A long silence followed.

Feng Yuhan said nothing for a while, his deep blue eyes unreadable as they weighed the implications.

He turned and strolled toward the window, gazing out at the stillness of the stone courtyard beyond.

"She is still dangerous…" he murmured, more to himself than to the guard.

"…But that, in itself, is what makes her fascinating."

In the glass, his reflection revealed a faint smile not born of joy, but of a man who sensed the board beginning to tremble beneath his feet.

⸻

That Same Night - The Cold Palace

Within a modest chamber now serving as Xianlan's quarters,

the flickering oil lamp wavered against the night wind sneaking through the wooden shutters.

She sat before the ink painting of Consort Yi Fei,

recently reclaimed from the Royal Archives.

The brushwork was ancient, done in black ink and fine lines capturing a woman whose face bore serene strength, a gaze both gentle and unyielding.

Xianlan stared at the image for a long time.

In her eyes were love, sorrow… and a spark of fire that had never quite gone out.

She reached for a small wooden plaque she had carved herself,

and began to write with a brush dipped in black ink her own hand, her own voice:

"If my mother perished for a crime she never committed,

I shall restore her honor.

And if the truth demands I be hated in return

Then let it be so.

For a mother's dignity… is her daughter's heart."

As the final drop of ink dried,

a breeze swept once more through the room.

The flame of the candle on the desk flickered, nearly extinguished but held steady, glowing defiantly in the hush of the night.

Xianlan closed her eyes and drew a quiet breath.

She did not cry.

There were no sobs.

No laments.

She had shed all her tears long ago on the night her mother died.

Tonight, what coursed through her veins was not grief

But a promise.

A promise spoken to no one…

Yet sharp enough to become a blade when the time came.

⸻

The Echo of the Zither

The next morning, the sound of a zither rang once more through the Cold Palace.

No one knew with certainty what thoughts filled the heart of the one playing.

But for those who listened deeply

they would know:

This was not the song of a phoenix weeping…

It was the song of a phoenix unfolding its wings.

Not to flee

But to reclaim everything that had once been stolen.

Beneath those wings lay not only grace

But barbed needles, unseen by careless eyes.

And when that needle strikes…

It never misses its mark.

"This chapter has been updated with improved narrative and deeper character perspective. The plot remains unchanged."

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