Empty Song of the Jade Terrace

Empty Song of the Jade Terrace is a long historical romance novel by Qing Mei, published in April 2015 by Baihuazhou Literature and Art Publishing House in three volumes (upper, middle, lower), totaling about 1.2 million characters. Set against the standoff between the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it tells of a Southern Dynasty regent princess who is betrayed by those she trusted amid political intrigue; her hair turns white overnight, she fakes her death and leaves the country, crossing the river north on the night of Cold Dew. Hiding her wounds, she takes the name "Ye Chuxue" and appears beside the Northern Dynasty regent as a bewitching, mysterious figure, intending to borrow his power for revenge, stir up Northern politics, and find a way to stop the Northern cavalry from marching south. Yet she soon finds the confrontation far more complicated than imagined: the man she must deal with may also be the only one who can heal her old wounds. Each serving their own country and their own political ends, they fall for each other amid probing and scheming, and repeatedly hurt each other amid court machinations, regime change, and battlefield slaughter. The novel advances three main threads—the leads' romance, Southern court strife, and Northern regime change—blending romance, political intrigue, conspiracy, and revenge, and, centered on the core theme of "trust," traces the two from mutual killing to mutual love and then to self-redemption. The book was serialized in the women's channel of NetEase Cloud Reading and won the 2013 Best Work Award in the women's channel.